THE 
SWORD  OF  YOUTH 


This  was  the  boy's  war  out  there  on  the  fields  amid 
the  dark  shadows  of  the  ground  and  amid  the  white 
shadows  of  his  spirit. 


THE 
SWORD  OF  YOUTH 


O  virtuous  fight! 
When  right  with  right  wars,  who  shall  be  most  right! 

Troilus  and  Cressida. 


BY 

JAMES  LANE  ALLEN 

Author  of   "A   Cathedral  Singer,"   "The  Bride   of   the    Mistletoe, 
"The  Kentucky  Cardinal,"  "The  Choir  Invisible,"  etc. 


WITH  ILLUSTRATIONS   BY 

JOHN  WOLCOTT  ADAMS 


NEW  YORK 
THE  CENTURY  CO. 
1915 


Copyright,  1914,  1915.  by 
THE  CENTURY  Co. 


Published,  February,  1915 


To 
GEORGE  FOLSOM  CRANBERRY 


079696 


AUTHOR'S  PREFATORY  NOTE 

This  story  appeared  in  recent  issues  of  The 
Century  Magazine.  As  there  adapted  for  serial 
use,  it  was  presented  in  a  somewhat  briefer  than 
its  original  form;  herewith  it  reappears  substan 
tially  as  it  was  written. 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

This  was  the  boy's  war  out  there  on  the  fields  amid  the 
dark  shadows  of  the  ground  and  amid  the  white 
shadows  of  his  spirit »  .  .  Frontispiece 

A  middle-aged  woman,  with  a  gigantic  masculine  frame 
and  the  face  of  a  soldier,  sat  on  the  porch  of  a  lonely 
farm-house  in  Central  Kentucky  knitting  an  under 
sized  sock 7 

She  came  upon  the  autumn  scene  out  of  the  world's  per 
petual  springtime 14 

With  one  hand  he  held  balanced  before  him  on  the  pom 
mel  of  the  saddle  a  large  handle-less  feed-basket  con 
taining  his  purchases  for  the  pantry 27 

War  and  hardships  and  responsibilities  had  matured  him 
faster  than  time,  faster  than  nature 34 

"I  think  I  knocked  his  front  teeth  out ;  I  hope  I  did"  .     .     47 

Only  a  few  minutes  were  needed  to  bring  him  to  the 
Moreheads' 54 

As  he  entered  the  yard,  Lucy  Morehead  was  out  there 
watering  the  flowers 63 

He  was  his  own  man,  his  own  master 78 

He  was  already  a  veteran  battle  unit 151 

A  few  miles  distant  a  hostile  army  was  hunting  them  down  158 
I  went  back  to  where  we  parted 167 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

"Is  Joe  over  here?'' 173 

From  him  we  learned  in  what  part  of  the  army  you  were  .   180 

Lucy  Morehead  had  come  out  for  her  usual  stroll  in  the 

coolness  of  the  evening   ..........   186 

Often  she  was  at  her  window  looking  impatiently     .     .     .   195 

Childhood  was  gone,  maidenhood  was  come,  and  mainden- 
hood  has  brought  its  tender  doubts 202 

She  saw,  appearing  suddenly  on  the  backbone  of  a  long 
ridge  situated  between  her  and  the  deep-golden  lights 
of  the  sky,  the  figure  of  a  man 215 

Upon  one  of  the  group  the  attention  of  the  others  was 

concentrated  with  more  than  respect 222 

He  had  reached  the  presence  of  his  captain  and  his  judge  251 
One  day  in  May  he  came 258 


THE 
SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

PART  FIRST 


THE 
SWORD  OF  YOUTH 


CHAPTER  I 


ONE  bright  September  afternbon  ,in  >:8&3'  2 
middle-aged  woman  with  a  gigantic  mascu 
line  frame  and  the  face  of  a  soldier  sat  on  the 
porch  of  a  lonely  farm-house  in  central  Kentucky 
knitting  an  undersized  sock.  Between  her  hands, 
which  bore  some  resemblance  to  the  feet  of  a  big 
hawk,  the  web  of  soft  grayish  wool  hung  down 
like  the  tender  torn  skin  of  a  mouse. 

Once  she  dropped  her  work,  and  picking  up 
the  companion  sock  just  finished,  she  stretched 
this  as  though  from  a  wish  to  have  it  larger,  to 
have  it  look  more  like  the  sock  of  a  real  man. 
Again  and  again,  unaware  of  her  act,  she  pulled 
it  the  long  way  and  the  broad  way;  and  again  and 

3 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

again  the  yielding  fiber  of  the  sheep's  back  re 
turned  to  an  inexorable  mold,  to  the  disappoint 
ing  shape  of  nature.  Then  rigid  in  her  chair, 
she  stretched  her  arm  out  sidewise  and  dropped 
the  sock  to  the  porch;  whereupon,  taking  up  her 
bright  needles,  she  went  on  to  round  out  its  fel 
low. 

Her  eyes  rested  on  her  work  but  her  thoughts 
seemed  to  dwell  upon  scenes  far  off — upon  great 
scenes  with  great  memories.  Interpreting  her 
expression,  you  would  have  said  that  terrible 
events  had  wrung  her  heart  but  had  left  her  the 
long  bivouac  of  a  proud  mind.  It  was  the  mar 
tial  vigil  of  this  bivouac  that  she  kept  there,  sit 
ting  majestical  and  alone  on  her  porch  that  still 
afternoon,  a  wounded  sentinel. 

At  intervals  her  eyes  were  raised.  They  looked 
across  the  yard  and  the  stable-lot  toward  a  weedy 
carriage-road  which  ran  over  empty  fields  to  an 
horizon  wall  of  blue  sky  and  white  clouds.  She 
had  drawn  her  chair  into  position  to  command  a 
view  of  this  road."  She  wished  to  catch  the  first 
glimpse  of  him  in  the  distance,  riding  slowly,  re- 

4 


arc**     •, 

W    «  :-  12 


A  middle-aged  woman,  with  a  gigantic 
masculine  frame  and  the  face  of  a  soldier, 
sat  on  the  porch  of  a  lonely  farm-house 
in  Central  Kentucky  knitting  an  under 
sized  sock. 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

turning  from  town  with  his  bundles,  an  under 
sized  figure.  There  would  be  the  usual  slant  of 
sunshine  on  his  coarse  straw  hat,  the  yellow  hat  of 
yellow  harvests. 

Whenever  she  scanned  the  road  a  shadow  of  dis 
appointment  darkened  her  face.  It  was  not  yet 
time  for  him  to  return  and  she  knew  this;  but 
unreasonableness  is  never  reasonable :  it  is  a  pend 
ulum  that  will  never  go  with  any  clock;  and  be 
cause  his  coming  was  the  only  incident  to  stir  the 
monotony  of  the  interminable  afternoon,  she  be 
gan  to  chide  him  for  being  late.  In  the  fallow 
soil  of  her  mind,  where  life  no  longer  sowed  boun 
tifully  as  it  had  sowed  of  old,  there  had  of  late 
years  sprung  up  a  strange  weed  of  impatience  with 
him,  and  now  in  nearly  everything  that  he  did  or 
did  not  do  he  seemed  born  to  tread  upon  that 
weed. 

A  breeze,  which  did  not  blow  wild  and  free 
across  the  country  but  gamboled  about  the  house 
as  a  domesticated  yard  wind,  brought  to  her  nos 
trils  a  familiar  odor.  The  next  moment  from 
around  the  corner  of  the  house,  at  the  end  of  the 

7 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

long  porch  where  the  kitchen  was  situated,  a  mid 
dle-aged  mulattress  stepped  slurringly  into  view 
and  stood  with  respect.  In  one  hand,  at  her  side, 
she  carried  a  piece  of  rope,  in  the  other  she  held 
a  clay  pipe;  on  the  heaped-up  tobacco  an  ember 
from  the  mid-afternoon  kitchen  ashes  glowed  a 
faint  rose. 

She  spoke  with  the  soft  voice  of  the  Southern 
negro,  betokening  in  her  case  happy  lifelong  slav 
ery,  out  of  which  had  grown  two  African  virtues, 
affection  and  loyalty: 

"I  'm  going  for  my  wood  now,  Miss  Henrietta." 

"  Very  well,  Tabitha." 

Her  mistress — mistress  no  longer — did  not  turn 
her  head  but  merely  lifted  her  eyes  with  another 
search  of  the  road.  The  tone  with  which  she 
had  replied  is  not  heard  in  this  country  now,  per 
haps  nowhere  in  the  world.  It  was  the  voice  of 
the  Southerner  of  that  period,  charged  with  abso 
lute  authority  over  the  slave.  That  terrible  au 
thority  had  just  come  to  its  terrible  end  in  the  na 
tion  but  the  tone  kept  sounding;  the  slaveless 
Kentucky  woman  still  commanded  her  slaves. 

8 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

When  the  negress  received  permission  to  do  the 
work  which  she  was  perfectly  free  not  to  do,  she 
turned  away  and  with  puffs  of  blue  smoke  float 
ing  over  her  shoulder  moved  along  a  footpath  to 
ward  the  cabins;  she  alone  remained  of  all  those 
once  crowded  into  those  white  frame  cottages. 
Near  them  was  a  woodpile  without  wood ;  the  fuel 
had  long  since  been  used.  At  the  center  of  the 
little  solitude  a  tall  sunflower  flaunted  the  colors 
of  the  sun  over  the  desolation  of  the  cooking-stove. 

The  negress  crossed  this  space  and  started  to 
wade  through  a  field  of  weeds  toward  a  fence  some 
hundreds  of  yards  off.  There  she  would  gather 
half-rotten  rails,  bind  these  into  a  bundle  with 
her  rope,  balance  the  bundle  on  her  head,  and  by 
and  by  come  wading  back  with  wood  to  cook  sup 
per  and  breakfast. 

This  story  is  not  about  her.  Yet  all  stories  of 
those  times  are  chained  to  her  bondage  and  to  the 
tragedy  of  that  bondage  for  the  unbound.  She 
explained  the  iron-willed,  tyrannical  woman  in 
the  porch,  the  vast  desolation  of  farms  and  planta 
tions,  the  distant  battle-line  of  exhausted,  mad- 

9 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

dened  armies  facing  each  other  half-way  across 
the  nation — youths  and  fathers  and  old  men  ready 
to  die  in  their  tracks  and  dying  there,  confident 
that  they  perished  on  plains  of  glory  about  her. 
Vanish  from  American  history  she  never  will,  in 
its  pantheon  of  colossal  figures  the  bronze  Victory 
of  a  great  self -avenging  wrong. 

The  words  of  former  slave  and  former  mis 
tress  had  disturbed  the  general  stillness  as  the 
dropping  of  a  few  pebbles  causes  a  quiver  on  a 
smooth  sea.  Within  the  house  only  the  twitter 
ings  and  flutterings  of  swallows  at  the  bottoms  of 
the  chimneys  behind  little  green  forests  of  as 
paragus  tops ;  outdoors,  around  a  small  stock  pond 
in  the  stable-lot,  only  the  cries  of  arrowy  barn- 
swifts  as  they  dipped  under  the  silvery  surface 
with  little  sounds  like  the  noises  of  torn  silk.  In 
more  distant  fields  and  pastures  the  myriad  mur 
murs  of  autumnal  insect  life  swarmed  to  the  ear 
like  faint  reverberations  of  the  movements  of 
drooping  battalions;  out  there  the  insects  echoed 
as  with  half -strangled  bodies  and  shattered  wings 
the  dying  of  the  old  nation. 

10 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

Another  muffled  sound  did  by  and  by  make  it 
self  audible  in  the  porch.  Not  far  off  in  the  yard 
an  enormous  peach-tree  stood  with  some  of  its 
fruit  ripening;  for  nature  ripens  a  tree  as  she 
ripens  a  life :  in  its  own  season  but  not  all  at  once. 
Beneath  the  tree  spread  the  autumn  bluegrass. 
From  out  a  tuft  of  leaves  nature  now  pushed  one 
royal  peach  and  it  dropped  to  the  grass  and  lay 
there  in  full  view,  tinted  with  the  colors  of  a  sun 
rise. 

The  lonely  woman  glanced  toward  it  and 
thought  of  a  father  and  four  big,  brawny,  gallant 
sons  nearly  as  tall  as  he  making  a  playful  group 
under  the  tree  while  one,  grasping  a  pole  to  which 
was  fastened  a  bag  like  a  bird's  nest,  brought 
down  the  peaches  unbruised.  It  went  desolately 
to  her  heart  that  for  them  this  afternoon  the  old 
house  tree  again  faithfully  ripened  its  fruit  but 
that  they  had  long  since  bit  the  dust  far  from  one 
another  in  the  dark  conflict's  fury  and  were 
brought  together  for  their  repose  only  in  a  mauso 
leum  of  battle-memories  which  she  guarded. 


ll 


CHAPTER  II 

SUDDENLY  from  the  direction  of  the  front 
of  the  comfortable  old  brownish  brick  house 
vwith  greenish  window-shutters  she  was  startled  by 
the  sounds  of  some  one  coming.  She  stopped 
knitting  and  sat  bolt  upright,  her  face  brighter. 
The  next  moment  a  girl  appeared,  walking  delib 
erately  and  carrying  in  each  hand  a  plate  covered 
with  a  napkin. 

She,  Lucy  Morehead, — even  at  first  sight  you 
would  have  judged  her  to  be  about  seventeen 
— had  arrived  from  the  nearest  farm-house  a  mile 
or  more  distant.  The  land  between  the  two 
homesteads  was  one  stretch  of  meadows  and  pas 
tures  across  which,  for  neighborliness  and  the  con 
veniences  of  farm  life,  a  carriage-and-wagon  road 
made  its  way,  with  deviations  to  circumvent  green 
hills  and  to  cross  fords  at  the  deep-banked  silvery 
brooks,  where  sometimes  mint  grew  and  brown- 
backed  white-bellied  minnows  darted.  For  walk- 

12 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

ers  a  foot-path  ran  straight  from  house  to 
house  and  by  this  the  visitor  had  arrived.  And 
there  she  was  now,  approaching  under  the  shadows 
of  the  old  forest  trees,  sometimes  in  open  spaces 
where  the  sunlight  fell  on  the  brilliant  grass. 

Mortal  curiosity  and  hope  hover  about  anything 
carried  under  a  fresh  napkin.  Therefore  you 
might,  by  reason  of  attending  to  the  covered  plates, 
have  failed  to  notice  that  the  bearer  of  them  was 
a  gray-eyed  lass,  a  long-lashed,  heavy-haired, 
sweet-mouthed,  very  winsome  lass;  not  tall,  not 
slender,  but  built  generously  on  the  essential 
womanly  plan  and,  it  plainly  appeared,  early  de 
veloped  by  impatient  nature  as  being  a  great 
chance  for  the  right  youth — for  the  right,  lusty, 
ardent  youth. 

Her  dainty  snowy  sunbonnet  was  lined  with 
pink;  her  dainty  sky-blue  gingham  dress  had 
bishop  sleeves  and  a  skirt  barely  reaching  to  the 
grass-tops.  Her  dainty,  snow-white  bib-apron 
was  tied  at  her  back  with  long  stiff  streamers. 
She  had  on  white  stockings  and  black  kid  slippers 
and  white  lace  mitts.  Her  heavy  chestnut  plaits 

13 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

reached  to  the  snowy  apron-bow  at  her  back;  and 
in  front,  at  an  upper  corner  of  the  bib-apron,  at 
the  heart-corner,  just  above  a  firm  warm  half- 
budded  breast,  she  had  pinned  a  little  bunch  of 
fresh  lemon  verbena  and  pink  honeysuckle. 

Altogether,  she  did  not  belong  to  the  nation's 
war  but  to  its  peace.  She  came  upon  the  autumn 
scene  out  of  the  world's  perpetual  springtime. 
So  that,  September  though  it  was,  you  fantasti 
cally,  fitly  conceived  her  as  having  stepped  down 
from  some  upper  chamber  in  the  April  of  old 
apple-trees  with  half-opened  buds  for  the  floor 
ing  and  with  bluebirds  building  and  caroling  about 
the  windows.  There  she  was  with  her  three 
blended  natures,  the  flower  of  her  sound,  sweet 
body,  the  maturer  vows  and  bonds  of  character  to 
be,  and  in  the  shadow  of  these,  waiting  in  the 
shadow  behind  life  itself,  the  folded  pinion  of 
something  divine. 

No  sooner  had  she  stepped  into  view  than  the 
mood  of  the  eager  woman  on  the  porch  underwent 
a  change.  Her  face  settled  to  a  look  of  limited 
cordiality.  The  visitor,  in  the  desperate  circum- 


'  /     J 

^M^s4\f%^v 


^^ChhiiV 

/^l^^  -- '- 

'   I   '    A;V' 

\      r 


She  came  upon  the  autumn  scene  out  of  the 
world's  perpetual  springtime. 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

stances,  might  be  welcome ;  she  was  not  wholly  ap 
proved  for  herself. 

But  the  hostess  rose,  laying  her  knitting  in 
her  chair,  and  advanced  to  the  edge  of  the 
porch  to  greet  her  guest;  the  Southern  gentle 
woman  of  those  days  always  rose  to  greet  any 
guest.  As  she  moved,  the  eyes  with  wonderment 
measured  her  extraordinary  height  and  dignity. 
She  had  the  figure  and  bearing  of  a  weather- 
beaten,  gaunt  general  wrapped  in  his  long  gray 
military  cloak;  for  her  dress  was  a  faded  gray  silk 
and  its  only  decoration  was  a  mourning-band  like 
a  military  collar.  This  collar  was  fastened  at  her 
throat  with  a  gold  portrait-locket  which  suggested 
a  big  brass  army-button.  Her  complexion  was 
sallow  and  little  freckles  on  her  face  and  hands 
all  the  more  gave  her  the  appearance  of  having 
just  been  through  a  military  campaign.  Her 
glossy  pale-brown  hair,  as  straight  as  an  Indian's, 
was  parted  in  the  middle  and  brushed  in  two  large 
puffs  back  over  her  ears.  She  had  wonderful  am 
ber-colored  eyes,  in  the  irises  of  which  little  round 
points  of  jet  looked  like  scattered  bird-shot — bold, 

17 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

keen,  far-searching,  unconquerable  eyes  worthy  of 
a  wilderness  hunter. 

Truly,  she  made  a  great  figure  there,  a  great 
presence,  solitary  gray  sibyl  of  a  Kentucky  epic 
past.  As  a  brook  may  have  its  spring  in  a  distant 
cloud-capped  range,  her  own  childhood  took  its 
rise  at  the  bases  of  those  historic  human  peaks 
that  were  the  pioneer  people  of  the  West;  her 
origins  lay  among  the  stark  mountains  of  woman 
kind.  Mainly  out  of  those  mothers  sprung  the 
tall  Kentuckians  of  the  bluegrass.  Sometimes  the 
women  of  that  stock  themselves  shot  up  to  the 
stature  of  men,  mates  and  equals  of  men  in  prow 
ess,  strength,  and  bravery,  endurance,  fighting 
qualities;  matching  virile  loins  with  abundant 
child-bearing.  A  great  daughter  of  this  great 
race  was  she,  though  she  stood  on  her  porch  that 
afternoon  amid  the  war-blasted  fields  of  Ken 
tucky  nearly  a  century  later.  Big  men  for  her, 
big  deeds,  big  virtues,  big  faults,  great  breadths 
of  sympathy,  great  narrowness  of  prejudice. 

At  her  rotting  porch-edge,  with  the  proud  breed 
ing  of  the  land,  she  waited  for  her  guest. 

18 


CHAPTER  III 

HOW  do  you  do,  Lucy4?  I  am  glad  to  see 
you,  my  dear,"  she  said,  with  the  smile 
of  a  large  gentleness,  as  Lucy  Morehead,  having 
put  one  of  the  plates  down  beside  a  pillar  of  the 
porch,  came  up  the  three  steps.  Neither  offered 
to  kiss  the  other,  though  this  ceremony  was  es 
teemed  a  custom  of  the  country.  Instead,  they 
shook  hands;  the  radiant  girl  smiled  back  at  the 
faded  woman,  and  looking  with  sincere  gray  eyes 
into  those  sincere  amber-colored  ones  which 
vaguely  suggested  two  nuggets  of  gold  half  buried 
in  the  surface  of  a  brownish  rock,  she  said  with  the 
simplest  response : 

"How  do  you  do,  Mrs.  Sumner4?"  Then  she 
offered  her  plate,  adding  as  simply,  "Mrs.  Sumner, 
we  were  making  little  spice-cakes  and  I  brought 
you  some." 

The  courtesy  could  hardly  have  been  held  to  be 

19 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

personal;  it  was  rather  an  observance  of  the  old 
hospitality  when  every  country  home  overflowed 
from  kitchen  and  pantry,  orchard  and  garden, 
upon  its  sated  neighbors.  For  exactly  this  reason 
the  gentlewoman  to  whom  it  was  offered  found 
the  gift  a  little  hard  to  receive.  It  brought  re 
membrance  of  how,  with  the  first  revolution  of 
the  great  iron  wheel  of  war  which  is  always  the 
great  golden  wheel  of  fortune — she  had  been 
hurled  from  high  to  low,  from  abundance  down  to 
need.  All  her  life  she,  too,  had  been  used  to  give, 
to  scatter  broadcast  among  her  neighbors ;  and  the 
reversal  of  position,  this  tying  of  her  hands  of 
plenty,  made  the  gift  a  little  bitter  as  she  held  out 
to  it  the  hands  of  want.  Nevertheless,  her  thanks 
were  graciously  expressed,  and  having  so  expressed 
them,  she  turned  and  bore  the  gift  into  the  house. 

"Sit  here,  Lucy,"  she  said,  coming  out  into  the 
porch  again  more  proudly  and  drawing  a  chair 
forward,  yet  not  very  near  to  her  own. 

"Thank  you,  Mrs.  Sumner;  I  believe  I  should 
like  to  sit  on  the  edge  of  the  porch,"  suggested  the 
girl  as  one  who  slips  away ;  and  she  went  back  and 

20 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

took  her  seat  on  the  edge  of  the  porch  beside  the 
plate  she  had  left  there.  The  seat  was  comfort 
able  and  it  was  natural,  since  even  grown  children 
often  retain  the  wild-animal  instinct  that  avoids 
the  artificial  elevations  of  chairs.  But  there  may 
have  been  a  purely  human  reason  also  why  the 
visitor  chose  that  spot  as  the  proper  remove  from 
which  to  pay  her  visit. 

Conversation  naturally  opened  with  neighborly 
inquiries,  but  scarcely  had  it  begun  before  Mrs. 
Sumner's  attention  began  to  be  drawn  to  the  plate. 
The  visitor  kept  guard  over  it  as  though  she  had 
not  surrendered  its  contents,  as  though  she  was 
not  permitting  it,  so  to  speak,  to  enter  the  house. 

Perhaps  only  minds  of  heroic  measure  experi 
ence  the  full  offensiveness  of  little  things,  the 
ignominy  of  having  to  treat  with  them  upon  any 
terms.  Mrs.  Sumner  felt  obliged,  though  re 
luctantly,  to  take  notice  of  the  plate  thus  forced 
upon  her  attention  yet  withheld  from  her  confi 
dence.  Such  behavior  in  her  guest  involved  a  de 
parture  from  acceptable  manners,  agreed  upon 
good  manners. 

21 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

"My  dear,"  she  said,  glancing  pointedly  at  the 
plate  to  force  an  immediate  explanation,  "you  are 
too  generous;  one  plateful  is  quite  my  share." 

Lucy  Morehead  merely  lifted  the  napkin  and 
peeped  under  it  with  an  air  of  innocence,  though 
allowing  it  to  be  inferred  that  innocence  was  not 
the  virtue  she  aimed  at. 

"Take  off  your  bonnet  Lucy,"  said  Mrs.  Sum- 
ner5  quickly. 

"Thank  you,  I  Jve  just  a  little  while  to  stay, 
Mrs.  Sumner,"  replied  the  girl,  resisting  the  ad 
vance.  "But  I  believe  I  will  take  it  off,"  she 
added,  considering  perhaps  her  own  whim;  and 
raising  her  chin,  she  untied  the  snowy  strings  and 
laid  the  bonnet  on  the  porch  beside  the  plate. 
Now  free  to  make  herself  comfortable,  she  crossed 
her  slippered  feet  on  the  grass,  crossed  her  hands 
in  her  lap,  tilted  her  head  at  a  slight  upward  angle 
against  a  pillar  of  the  porch,  and  fixed  her  eyes  on 
Mrs.  Sumner's  face,  studying  its  expression. 

That  face  had  grown  graver.  Plainly  a  liberty 
was  being  taken  that  amounted  to  an  affront. 
There  is  often  another  obstacle  to  the  peace  of 

22 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

minds  of  heroic  measure:  they  can  carry  on  war 
only  behind  the  barrier  of  their  own  ideals, 
among  which  may  be  reckoned  the  walls  of  their 
own  impregnable  politeness.  If  they  could  push 
those  walls  over  and  pass  out  and  attack  on  the 
rude  low  field  as  they  are  rudely  attacked,  some 
considerable  part  of  the  personal  and  domestic  his 
tory  of  this  world  would  be  reversed.  Instead, 
they  can  only  look  down  from  such  defenses,  not 
level  them.  Mrs.  Sumner  now  felt  that  if  her 
youthful  visitor  was  being  discourteous,  she  must 
be  treated  with  all  the  more  courtesy.  On  her 
own  part,  since  she  could  not  explore  the  plate, 
she  must  ignore  it  until  the  little  drama  worked  it 
self  out  according  to  the  caprice  of  the  dramatist. 

She  led  the  conversation  once  more  to  neigh 
borly  inquiries.  Lucy  Morehead,  at  ease  with  en 
joyment  of  the  situation  she  had  brought  about, 
began  to  take  a  wider  survey  of  her  surroundings. 
She  espied  the  peach  out  in  the  grass  and  for  a 
while  looked  at  it  with  ever-mounting  and  amused 
desire. 

"May  I  have  that  peach,  Mrs.  Sumner?"  she 
23 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

asked  finally,  laughing  and  coloring  at  her  own 
avowed  beggary. 

"My  dear,  you  may  have  a  basketful  if  you  can 
find  ripe  ones.  The  pole  is  propped  there  in  the 
fork.  I  will  come  out  and  help  you." 

"Oh,  no,  thank  you;  I  want  just  that  one,"  said 
the  girl,  declining  again;  and  she  went  over  and 
picked  up  the  peach  and  returned  to  her  seat  and 
put  it  beside  her  bonnet. 

"You  know  we  have  n't  any  fruit  knives  now, 
Lucy." 

"Thank  you;  I  want  to  take  it  home  to  look 
at." 

Next  the  girl's  eyes  fell  upon  the  sock  on  the 
porch  at  arm's-length  from  the  chair  of  the  knit 
ter.  She  had  seen  it  the  moment  she  arrived. 
There  could  be  only  one  person  for  whom  that  sock 
was  knit.  When  she  spoke  again,  her  voice  had 
sunk  to  the  lowest  tone  in  her  scale.  Always  it  is 
the  frivolous  that  soars  toward  the  shrill.  The 
lowest  key  of  the  voice  is  reserved  for  what  lies  at 
the  bottom  of  the  mind — for  the  significant,  the 
serious,  the  intimate,  the  very  tender.  The  girl 

24 


With  one  hand  he  held  balanced  before  him  on  the  pommel  of 
the  saddle  a  large  handle-less  feed-basket  containing  his  purchases 
for  the  pantry. 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

spoke  with  her  voice  gone  down  to  its  lowest  key : 

"Is  Joe  at  home,  Mrs.  Simmer?' 

So  composedly  she  sat  there,  with  her  slippers 
crossed  on  the  grass,  her  hands  crossed  in  her  lap, 
her  head  resting  against  the  porch  pillar,  her  ac 
cusing  eyes  resting  on  the  knitter's  face — child 
hood  in  its  awful  judgment  upon  age.  You 
would  at  once  known  that,  whoever  Joe  was,  in 
the  opinion  of  the  visitor  he  was  not  appreciated, 
was  somehow  being  wronged  all  along.  "Is  Joe 
at  home?' 

The  answer  was  quietly  returned,  enveloped  in 
comment : 

"He  has  gone  to  town.  He  took  in  a  basket  of 
peaches  and  he  is  to  bring  back  some  groceries. 
We  shall  depend  upon  the  peach-tree  awhile  for 
supplies.  He  ought  to  be  here  now." 

A  second  question  followed  in  that  same  low 
est  key  of  the  intimate: 

"He  is  seventeen  to-day,  is  n't  he?" 

An  answer  was  returned  with  dry  reticence : 

"Yes,  he  is  seventeen  to-day." 

"Mrs.  Sumner,"  said  Lucy  Morehead,  sitting 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

up  suddenly,  "will  you  give  him  this  plate,  please, 
when  he  comes,  and  tell  him  that  it  is  a  cake  I 
made  for  him?  I  remembered  this  is  his  birth 
day." 

The  words  were  meant  to  cut,  and  words  meant 
to  cut  in  that  way  always  do  cut. 

"Yes,  my  dear,  he  will  get  it  when  he  comes." 

The  plate  was  explained,  the  visit  over,  but  the 
visitor  lingered.  She  did  not  withdraw  her  eyes 
from  the  mother's  face,  gaging  its  significance. 
This  was  only  a  little  scene  in  an  old  warfare — 
that  between  two  women  over  a  man  to  whom 
both  are  bound  most  closely  but  each  most  differ 
ently;  an  old  warfare  as  to  which  understands 
him  better,  esteems  him  more,  holds  him  dearer, 
and  will  attack  the  other  for  him  first. 

Suddenly  the  girPs  mood  changed.  She  bent 
over  the  plate,  lifted  the  napkin  again,  peeped, 
and  laughed  to  herself. 

"It  is  n't  spice-cake,"  she  said,  looking  up  at 
the  mother  with  innocence,  beautiful  because  it 
was  innocence.  "It  is  n't  spice-cake!" 

"He  will  find  out  what  kind  it  is." 
28 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

"He  won't  know.  Will  you  please  be  sure  to 
tell  Joe  that  it 's  bride's  cake?" 

She  spoke  as  though  for  a  birthday  of  that  char 
acter  the  appropriate  offering  was  a  cake  of  that 
description,  and  to  this  she  had  nothing  to  add. 
Slowly  she  put  on  her  bonnet  and  slowly  she 
walked  up  into  the  porch. 

"Good-by,  Mrs.  Sumner." 

Mrs.  Sumner  rose: 

"Good-by." 

Lucy  Morehead  went  away  across  the  yard  as 
deliberately  as  she  had  come.  Mrs.  Sumner  let 
her  hands  drop  to  her  lap  and  watched  the  sweet 
April-fragrant  figure  until  it  disappeared  around 
the  corner  of  the  lonely  house. 

Among  the  few  wholly  innocent  pleasures  of  the 
old  must  be  reckoned  their  discovery  of  the  love- 
making  of  the  young.  It  is  like  seeing  the  first 
crocus  come  up  in  an  abandoned  yard,  like  watch 
ing  from  an  afternoon  window  a  distant  hill  turn 
green,  like  pulling  apart  aged  lilacs  and  surpris 
ing  within  them  the  few  strands  of  a  nest.  The 
traveler  turns  round,  steps  backward  to  the  rot- 

29 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

ting  gate  of  the  past,  and,  leaning  on  it  with  a 
smile,  looks  finally  at  springtime  and  romance. 

But  we  have  only  to  press  upon  life's  pleasures 
a  very  little  to  force  out  of  any  one  of  them  the 
blood-drops  of  a  wound;  and  these  shy,  beautiful 
alliances  of  the  young  have  likewise  to  be  under 
stood  as  their  heartless  preparation  to  capture 
the  scene;  as  nature's  rise  and  revolt  against  the 
old,  which  will  presently  push  them  out  of  their 
chairs  and  beds,  away  from  tables  and  chimney- 
corners,  out  of  the  porches,  out  of  the  world. 

As  Lucy  Morehead's  figure  passed  from  sight 
and  Mrs.  Sumner  took  up  her  knitting,  the  gayer 
half  of  the  visit,  its  freshness,  its  charm,  its  ro 
mance,  passed  quickly  from  her  mind,  leaving  the 
serious  half  to  weigh  upon  her  reflections.  This 
was  her  natural  way,  however,  of  looking  at  all 
life;  for  one  of  the  weaknesses  of  her  mind  was 
that  it  was  too  strong.  She  was  unable  to  look 
at  little  things  in  a  little  way.  For  her  they  al 
ways  ran  into  ever  larger  things  until  she  lost 
sight  of  them  altogether  in  the  really  important. 
She  would  have  followed  the  harmless  brooks  of 

3° 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

the  farm  until  they  reached  the  ocean  and  lashed 
the  tides  and  took  part  in  shipwrecks.  Then, 
with  her  mind  on  the  shipwrecks,  she  would  have 
forgotten  the  brooks. 

It  is  true  that  there  was  special  reason  why  the 
child's  visit  was  grave  enough;  for  it  was  a  veiled 
attack  upon  her  motherhood,  upon  her  treatment 
of  her  own  son.  She  had,  moreover,  never  borne 
a  daughter;  and  it  had  been  to  her  a  harsh  limita 
tion  of  her  own  harshness,  that  she  had  not  per 
petuated  lovely  feminine  traits  among  men,  had 
not  even  brought  into  the  world  another  harsh 
woman  to  replace  herself. 

But  Lucy  Morehead  had  more  nearly  than  any 
one  else  taken  a  daughter's  place.  She  had 
been  at  the  Moreheads'  on  the  night  the  little 
new-comer  arrived,  and  had  been  among  the  first 
to  enfold  her  in  sympathetic  maternal  arms.  As 
time  went  on  the  little  girl  had  become  her  favor 
ite  child  in  the  neighborhood;  and  this  beautiful 
relation  had  lasted  until  the  day  when  nature 
brought  about  one  of  her  cruel  changes.  Lucy 
Morehead  had  grown  old  enough  to  discover  that 

31 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

the  main  person  in  the  Sumner  house  was  not 
Mrs.  Sumner  but  Mrs.  Sumner's  son.  And  the 
change  became  crueller  when  she  began  to  take 
sides  with  him  against  the  mother — to  withdraw 
her  visits,  to  cool  in  her  affection,  until  finally  the 
relation  between  them  had  become  what  the  visit 
of  this  afternoon  had  shown  it  to  be,  one  of  alien 
ation  and  of  reproach. 

The  knitting  mother  thought  bitterly  of  all  this ; 
and  she  did  not  stop  there,  but  went  on  to  con 
jecture  whether  her  son  were  not  really  back  of 
the  girl's  reproachful  visit  and  behavior.  Had 
he  been  complaining  of  his  own  mother?  Did 
they  stand  together  in  this  condemnation  of  her? 
She  had  no  evidence  on  which  she  could  lay  a 
clear  touch  that  such  was  the  case ;  but  she  had  her 
intuition.  Intuition!  That  pompous  charlatan 
whom  we  station  at  the  front  entrance  of  our  in 
telligence  to  give  us  news  of  those  who  pass  and 
of  those  who  arrive.  That  mischievous  misinfor- 
mer  whose  word  we  never  doubt!  She  had  her 
intuition. 

And  so  absorbed  was  she  with  its  evil  prompt- 
32 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

ings  that  she  forgot  any  longer  to  watch  for  the 
return  of  her  son  across  the  fields.  Then  at  last 
she  did  lift  her  eyes,  and  saw  him  not  away  off  in 
the  distance  but  right  there  close  to  the  fence. 


33 


CHAPTER  IV 

HE  was  at  the  stiles  near  the  yard  gate,  astride 
his  father's  old  velvet-footed  bay  saddle- 
horse,  the  only  horse  left  to  them.  With  one 
hand  he  held  balanced  before  him  on  the  pommel 
of  the  saddle  a  large  handle-less  feed-basket  con 
taining  his  purchases  for  the  pantry;  the  day's 
newspaper  lay  folded  on  top  of  the  groceries. 

With  both  hands  he  lifted  the  basket  over  to 
the  upper  block  of  the  stiles  and  then  got  off  on 
the  lower  block.  He  ungirthed  his  saddle  and 
threw  it  with  the  saddle  blanket  upon  the  top 
plank  of  the  fence:  the  blanket  was  a  piece  of 
worn-out  stair-carpet  and  the  saddle  had  one  stir 
rup.  On  the  horse's  back  was  a  darker  spot  made 
by  its  sweat  where  the  blanket  had  lain.  He 
leaned  over  and  regretfully  examined  a  little 
place  on  the  backbone;  the  saddle  was  rubbing  it 
raw,  the  blanket  not  furnishing  a  thick  enough 

34 


-^ 


k. 


War  and  hardships  and  responsibilities  had  matured 
him   faster   than   time,    faster   than   nature. 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

pad.  The  horse  knew  why  he  was  looking  and 
bent  his  neck  around  and  looked,  too,  wondering 
whether  anything  was  going  to  be  done.  Then 
the  boy  stepped  down  off  the  block  and  undid  the 
throat-latch;  and  as  the  horse  lowered  his  head 
toward  him,  he  slipped  off  the  bridle  with  a  good- 
by  pat  or  two  on  the  forehead. 

Joseph  Sumner  swung  the  heavy  basket  to  his 
right  hip,  and  holding  it  there  and  bending  far 
over  to  balance  the  weight,  he  kicked  the  latch- 
less  yard  gate  open,  and  came  along  the  grassy 
pavement  to  the  porch. 

As  he  thus  walked  bent  over,  he  looked  less  like 
an  under-grown  youth  than  a  little  old  man  bowed 
beneath  the  weight  of  his  years  and  the  burden  of 
his  toil.  You  could  see  that  he  was  strongly 
built,  well  put  together;  but  there  could  be  no 
denial  that  his  proportions  were  not  impressive,  not 
hero-like.  The  bodily  total  of  him  was  a  disap 
pointment,  a  chagrin,  a  calamity.  In  a  family  of 
giants,  father  and  much  older  brothers,  who  now 
that  they  had  fallen  in  battle  were  larger  than  life, 
since  the  glorious  dead  always  grow  in  remem- 

37 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

brance  beyond  reality,  in  such  a  family  of  males, 
with  a  gigantic  mother,  too,  he  was  despicable ;  he 
was  a  human  nubbin,  he  was  the  family  runt. 
Nature  had  seemingly  fenced  him  off  into  a  little 
life-pen  as  a  negligible  runt. 

His  hands  looked  like  a  workman's  from  hard 
rough  usage,  and  they  were  browned  and  freckled, 
as  his  face  was  browned  and  freckled.  He  was 
not  to  be  described  as  freckled  but  as  speckled: 
for  every  freckle  of  hers  she  had  laid  on  him  ten. 
Under  the  coarse  straw  hat  you  could  see  that  he 
had  thick  reddish-yellowish  hair,  with  thick 
whitish  eyelashes  and  eyebrows.  They  looked  all 
the  whiter  at  present  because  he  was  covered  with 
pike  dust;  it  had  settled  over  him  like  a  fine 
meal,  from  his  eyelashes  to  his  coarse  dark-cjoth 
jacket  and  down  to  his  negro  shoes,  unblacked, 
and  tied  with  leather  strings.  He  was  not  ill- 
looking  in  the  face  but  good-looking,  with  four 
strong  signs  in  the  direction  of  manhood — eyes 
full  of  genuine  character,  large  ears,  a  long  strong 
nose,  and  a  big,  shapely,  honest,  most  human 
mouth.  Such  a  mouth  alone  has  made  the  career 

38 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

of  many  a  man  in  his  struggle  with  natural  disad 
vantages. 

Perhaps  the  foremost  character  impression  you 
got  of  him  was  his  looking  settled.  He  came 
upon  the  stagnant  scene  as  the  active,  authorita 
tive  head  of  things.  A  war-child  during  these 
later  years  of  his  short  life,  war  and  hardships  and 
responsibilities  had  matured  him  faster  than  time, 
faster  than  nature.  In  premature  development 
of  his  whole  self  he  was  a  young  man;  he  was 
twenty.  And  that  workman's  face  of  his  might 
next  have  been  read  by  you  as  truly  a  marvelous 
document  of  human  fidelity,  a  meek  page  out  of 
life's  testament  of  faithfulness. 

"Well,  Mother,"  he  said,  in  his  pleasant  way, 
setting  the  basket  down  on  the  edge  of  the  porch, 
"here  are  all  the  things." 

He  said  this  with  a  tone  of  glad  respect  for  her 
but  with  a  candid  admission  that  he  was  about 
done  for.  He  might  well  have  been,  for  he  had 
worked  at  one  thing  or  another  since  daybreak. 
But  something  else  sounded  in  that  voice,  the  high 
est,  deepest  thing  in  him — the  solemn  sweetness  of 

39 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

duty.  He  became  at  once  to  you  a  person  who  in 
those  simple  words  was  discharging  himself  of  his 
day's  stewardship  with  a  good  conscience.  You 
might  likewise  have  inferred,  had  you  listened 
delicately,  that  only  by  an  effort  had  he  fixed  his 
mind  on  that  stewardship  of  buying  groceries; 
the  splendid  concern  of  his  life  this  day  had  not 
been  in  buying  groceries. 

She  merely  asked  one  question,  the  usual  ques 
tion,  as  she  drew  her  chair  over  to  the  edge  of  the 
porch : 

"Is  there  any  more  news  from  the  war  to-day, 
Joe?" 

"Nothing  since  yesterday." 

She  laid  the  newspaper  covetously  in  her  lap  to 
read  at  once,  and  began  to  lift  the  bundles  out 
one  by  one,  those  packages  of  adversity,  which,  as 
she  piled  them  on  the  porch,  suggested  a  small 
rampart  against  hunger,  an  armful  for  the  old-time 
pantry  ful. 

She  investigated  each  parcel,  welcomed  each, 
with  the  comical,  the  absurd  interest  of  unoccu 
pied,  lonely  country  people  in  things  that  have 

40 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

just  been  brought  from  town.  He  stood  before, 
her,  looking  on  reminiscently. 

"I  wasted  two  of  the  peaches,"  he  said,  bring 
ing  the  matter  up  promptly  as  entering  into  a 
faithful  accounting  of  his  stewardship. 

"How?" 

She  did  not  lift  her  head;  her  voice  expressed 
no  surprise,  but  surely  it  expressed  no  pleasure. 
He  explained  with  some  self-satisfaction: 

"When  I  got  out  on  the  pike,  I  had  n't  ridden 
far  before  I  came  to  a  train  of  loaded  army- 
wagons  on  their  way  south — half  a  mile  of  them. 
Something  had  happened  to  one  of  the  wagons  at 
the  head  of  the  train  and  they  had  all  halted. 
As  I  was  riding  along  on  the  side  of  the  pike,  one 
of  the  teamsters,  a  big  fellow  in  his  new  blue  uni 
form,  caught  sight  of  the  peaches  on  top  of  the 
basket,  and  sprang  up  on  the  seat,  and  called  out 
to  me:  'Hello,  you  damned,  dried-up  little 
rebel,  throw  me  a  peach.'  I  stopped  and  picked 
up  the  biggest  and  greenest  one  I  could  put  my 
hand  on,  and  stood  up  in  the  stirrup,  and  threw  it 
at  him  as  hard  as  I  could.  But  he  caught  it  and 

41 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

laughed  at  me  and  stuck  his  teeth  in  it  and  held 
out  his  hands  and  called  out  from  behind  the 
peach,  'Hit  me  again,  Colonel.'  I  picked  up  an 
other  one  and  threw  that  at  him  with  all  my 
might,  and  hit  him  on  the  nose.  The  blood 
spurted  out  on  his  face.  I  think  I  knocked  his 
front  teeth  out;  I  hope  I  did.  Anyhow,  he 
dropped  the  peach  out  of  his  mouth.  Then  I 
rode  on.  Two  were  all  I  could  waste  on 
him." 

That  quick  heat,  that  instant  blow,  which  was 
in  his  father's  blood  and  in  hers,  that  family 
trait,  that  Kentucky  ideal,  drew  from  her  in  his 
case  no  response.  Such  things  were  not  for  him. 
An  attack  on  half  a  mile  of  army-wagons  with  a 
basket  of  ripe  peaches  meant  for  market — that  did 
not  particularly  resemble  anything  in  the  pioneers. 
Nothing  in  the  life  and  adventures  of  Daniel 
Boone  was  eclipsed  by  it,  for  instance.  The 
pleasure  he  now  felt  in  telling  of  it  almost  sa 
vored  to  her  of  brag,  because  he  had  nothing  bigger 
on  his  record  as  an  achievement. 

She  was  looking  at  a  few  lumps  of  white  sugar. 
42 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

She  knew  perfectly  well  how  white  sugar  looked; 
but  she  was  looking  at  the  white  sugar,  which  at 
any  sacrifice  she  would  have.  Suddenly  she  laid 
the  package  down,  glanced  over  the  total  of  things 
on  the  porch,  and,  missing  something,  raised  her 
dull-burning,  amber  eyes  to  his : 

"Where  is  the  tin  bucket  you  were  to  buy  and 
where  is  the  lard4?" 

He  met  her  look,  thunderstruck,  undone.  He 
jerked  off  his  hat  and  thrust  his  fingers  into  his 
sandy  hair  on  one  side  of  his  head  and  rubbed  it 
hard,  as  if  to  cudgel  the  undutiful  brain  on  the 
inside.  Then  he  made  his  clean,  sorrowful  con 
fession  : 

"I  forgot  the  bucket  and  I  forgot  the  lard." 

This  was  one  of  the  failings  that  tried  her,  his 
forgetfulness.  It  grew  on  him.  When  he  was 
young,  apparently  he  could  not  forget  anything; 
he  was  a  little  remembering  prodigy.  But  as  he 
had  grown  older,  he  had  begun  to  lapse,  as  though 
his  thoughts,  separated  from  his  duties,  had  chosen 
widening  paths.  To  her  it  was  a  bad  sign,  a 
weak  tendency  toward  slackness,  shiftlessness. 

43 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

Certainly  this  was  no  pioneer  trait,  no  family  trait. 
If  there  had  been  a  family  coat-of-arms,  its  motto 
would  have  been,  "Do  not  forget."  Aye,  do  not 
forget.  Do  not  forget  strangers,  do  not  forget 
friends,  do  not  forget  enemies.  Do  not  forget 
hospitality,  do  not  forget  kindnesses,  do  not  for 
get  injuries.  Do  not  forget  the  living,  do  not  for 
get  the  dead.  Vigilance,  wariness,  absolute  at 
tention  to  the  thing  in  hand — these  had  made  the 
pioneer,  had  made  Kentucky,  had  made  the  fam 
ily.  History  had  no  record  of  sleepy-headed, 
wool-gathered  backwoodsmen,  or  of  absent- 
minded  Indians;  or  of  absent-minded  Sumners. 

The  spirit  of  this  hardihood,  of  all  these  tradi 
tions,  was  in  her  tone  as  she  asked  her  next  ques 
tion: 

"How  did  you  happen  to  forget1?" 

"I  don't  know  how  I  happened  to  forget.  I 
wish  I  did  know.  I  would  n't  do  it  again." 

"I  made  a  memorandum  for  you." 

"On  the  way  to  town  I  read  the  memorandum 
over  and  threw  it  away :  I  thought  I  had  memo 
rized  the  memorandum." 

44 


'I  think  I  knocked  his  front  teeth  out;  I  hope  I  did." 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

Now,  what  kind  of  pioneer  was  that,  again? 
Of  what  value  to  history  would  have  been  that 
great  Kentucky  expedition  of  Lewis  and  Clarke 
into  the  Northwest,  for  example,  if  they  had  made 
memoranda  of  their  journey,  memorized  the  mem 
oranda,  thrown  the  memoranda  away,  and  then 
forgotten  what  they  had  memorized'? 

With  every  attempt  to  get  at  the  root  of  the 
matter,  he  further  demonstrated  his  unreliableness. 
And  now  he  stood  before  her  convicted  of  having 
come  short  of  his  duty.  His  plain  judgment  of 
himself  was  that  there  could  be  no  way  out  of 
this  trouble,  that  he  had  failed  of  his  duty. 
Thus  he  forced  her  to  provide  a  way,  which  would 
also  carry  along  with  it  the  needed  wholesome  dis 
cipline. 

"Go  into  the  kitchen  and  get  the  old  bucket," 
she  said  in  a  voice  of  mortification  that  she  was 
brought  down  to  a  trifle  which  might  have  been 
remedied  so  easily,  "and  go  over  to  Mrs.  More- 
head's  and  tell  her  that  I  wish  she  would  lend  me 
enough  lard  for  supper  and  breakfast.  Tell  her 
I  told  you  to  get  lard  in  town  to-day  but  that  you 

47 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

forgot  it.  Explain  to  her  that  I  am  ashamed  to 
have  to  borrow." 

Her  voice  put  the  load  of  the  whole  matter 
back  on  his  shoulders;  and  he  accepted  the  load 
with  the  submissiveness  of  a  tired  donkey  which, 
having  reached  home  hungry  and  thirsty  after  a 
long  journey,  is  started  off  on  another  without  food 
or  drink.  In  truth  he  became  instantly  alert  and 
grateful  for  this  unexpected  way  out  of  the  diffi 
culty.  And  he  started  off  toward  the  kitchen, 
saying  to  her  with  a  kind  of  apologetic  reassur 
ance  and  with  fresh  faith  in  his  efficiency  this 
time : 

"It  won't  take  me  long.  It  is  n't  time  yet  to  go 
about  supper.  I  '11  be  back  in  a  few  minutes, 
Mother." 


48 


CHAPTER  V 

INDEED,  he  walked  so  fast  that  only  a  few 
minutes  were  needed,  along  the  straight  path 
across  the  fields,  to  bring  him  to  the  Moreheads'. 

As  he  entered  the  yard,  Lucy  Morehead  was  out 
there  watering  the  flowers  growing  about  the 
front  porch  and  in  little  oval  beds  on  each  side  of 
the  pavement:  they  needed  regular  watering  that 
year,  for  there  was  a  great  September  dryness  in 
the  clouds.  The  younger  children  of  the  family, 
in  fresh  white  frocks,  with  fresh  ringlets  and  tiny 
slippers,  were  playing  about  her  at  a  safe  dis 
tance;  for  to  keep  them  at  this  distance  that  she 
might  be  undisturbed,  she  now  and  then  lifted 
the  watering-pot  and  threw  the  spray  at  them, 
threatening  their  frocks  and  curls.  It  was  a 
charming  scene. 

She,  too,  at  home  was  at  the  head  of  affairs. 
Her  father,  the  country  doctor  of  the  neighbor- 

49 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

hood,  had  died  the  year  before  the  war;  her 
brother,  the  eldest  child,  had  at  the  first  bugle- 
call  gone  into  the  Southern  cavalry  of  Kentucky 
men;  her  mother  was  an  invalid.  And  thus 
she  also  had  been  forced  into  a  maturity  of  char 
acter  beyond  her  years.  But  their  property  had 
not  suffered  from  the  ravages  of  war:  the  former 
physician's  services  to  all  were  gratefully  remem 
bered,  and  the  family  were,  besides,  sweet-natured 
people  who  built  friendships  in  houses  as  natur 
ally  as  birds  build  nests  in  trees. 

When  she  saw  him,  she  put  down  the  watering- 
pot  at  once,  heedless  of  the  children,  who  closed 
in  and  wrangled  as  to  which  should  use  it;  and  she 
came  to  meet  him  with  the  serenity  which  was 
her  temperament,  her  trustfulness.  She  was  now 
white-frocked  also  and  bare-headed,  with  a  blue 
ribbon  at  her  throat  white  like  a  swan's,  and  a 
blue  ribbon  at  her  belt,  and  blue  ribbons  laced 
Highland- fashion  about  her  white  ankles.  She 
was  just  old  enough  to  begin  to  make  herself 
two  or  three  times  a  day  an  invitation  to  love's 
arms. 

50 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

The  effect  of  her  afternoon  visit  to  his  mother 
had  left  misgivings,  and  his  unexpected  appear 
ance  became  associated  in  her  mind  with  a  stormy 
scene  that  might  have  followed  upon  his  return. 

"How  do  you  do4?"  she  said,  with  uneasiness 
at  heart,  but  with  mischief  still  lurking  in  her 
laughing  eyes. 

He  stopped  before  her,  soiled  and  forlorn,  and 
did  not  even  pluck  up  heart  to  greet  her.  Her 
loveliness,  her  freshness,  was  blurred  to  him,  was 
invisible,  on  account  of  his  abject  errand,  his 
most  unbeautiful  emergency,  his  disgrace  of  mem 
ory. 

"Lucy,"  he  said  with  a  husky  throat,  "I  for 
got  the  lard!  Mother  asks  Mrs.  Morehead  to 
lend  her  enough  for  supper  and  breakfast.  Will 
you  get  it  and  bring  it  out  to  me,  please^  She 
will  get  some  in  town  to-morrow  and  return  it. 
And  please  tell  Mrs.  Morehead  that  mother  is 
sorry  to  give  her  this  trouble.  Explain  to  her 
that  it  is  all  my  fault,  my  forgetfulness." 

He  was  so  glad  to  take  the  blame  off  his  mother, 
to  lay  the  load  of  it  where  it  belonged,  on  his 

51 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

donkey  back  and  brain.  Truly,  he  showed  the 
meekness  of  a  self -thrashed  human  donkey,  that 
had  enjoyed  his  beating. 

His  first  words  having  quieted  her  fears,  she 
gave  way  to  humor  at  the  sight  of  him,  at  the  ig 
nominy  of  his  plight.  The  dews  of  laughter  were 
on  her  long  lashes,  and  her  face  had  flushed  rose- 
pink  as  she  took  the  bucket  out  of  his  hand.  But 
first  she  let  her  hand  slide  down  and  lie  beside  his 
about  the  bucket-handle.  His  had  not  been 
washed  since  morning,  but  the  touch  of  it  sent  a 
thrill  through  her  which  she  did  not  quite  ac 
knowledge  to  herself.  She  knew  only  his  hand, 
not  his  lips. 

"You  shall  have  all  the  lard  you  want,"  she 
said,  with  an  overflow  of  the  maternal.  "What 
else?' 

"Nothing  but  lard — unless  I  have  forgotten 
something  else." 

She  eyed  him  with  comical  distrust. 

"Had  n't  you  better  try  to  remember4?  Sup 
pose  I  run  over  the  list?  Butter?  No  butter? 
Preserves?  Spice?  No,  not  any  more  spice. 

52 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

Never  any  more  spice,  never!  Nothing  else? 
Soap?  Lye?"  She  had  in  her  a  streak  of 
woman's  salutary  wit  and  wickedness. 

"Lard 's  all,"  he  said  solemnly,  "I  think!" 

She  tossed  her  head  at  him  and  turned  and 
walked  toward  the  house. 

"Hurry,  Lucy,  won't  you,  please?"  he  called 
after  her,  desperately. 

"I  am  hurrying,"  she  called  back  over  her  shoul 
der,  slackening  her  steps,  with  her  lovely  profile 
in  view. 

When  she  brought  the  bucket  out  to  him,  he 
held  out  his  hand  to  take  it,  but  she  stepped  back, 
searching  him  with  her  eyes  reproachfully. 

"Not  until  you  remember  something  else,"  she 
said. 

"There  is  not  another  thing,"  he  protested. 
"Not  one  thing,  I  swear!" 

She  stepped  forward  and  looked  at  him  rebuk- 
ingly. 

"And  you  have  already  forgotten  your  birth 
day-cake?" 

He  shook  his  head  as  though  he  did  not  under- 
53 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

stand,  as  though  his  brain  had  given  away  under 
the  strain. 

She  explained,  with  some  sudden  misgivings  of 
her  own : 

"I  made  you  a  birthday-cake  and  left  it  for  you 
this  afternoon.  And  you  have  n't  received  it?" 

"For  me*l  To-day*?  You  made  me  a  birth 
day-cake  to-day?" 

He  dwelt  upon  the  last  word  as  though  it  were 
the  most  important  part  of  the  whole  matter. 
Then  he  continued,  looking  at  her  with  dusty  ten 
derness  : 

"I  had  just  gotten  home,  and  we  were  looking 
over  the  things  when  we  missed  this"  taking  the 
bucket  from  her  and  shaking  it  ignominiously.  "I 
will  get  the  cake  when  I  go  home.  And  when  I 
come  back,  I  '11  thank  you  then.  I  want  you  to 
meet  me  after  supper.  There  is  something  I  want 
to  tell  you,  to-night,  Lucy." 

His  look,  his  voice,  instantly  drove  away  play 
ful  thoughts.  She  searched  his  face  and  saw 
what  was  new  and  strange.  And  she  asked  with 
quick  sympathy : 

54 


Only  a  few  minutes  were  needed  to  bring  him  to  the  Moreheads'. 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

"Is  it  something  important?" 

"It  is  important;  but  I  must  hurry  back  now. 
You  meet  me.  Don't  fail,  Lucy." 

It  was  like  a  command,  his  first  command  to 
her.  She  liked  it  all  the  more  for  that  reason,  and 
she  responded  at  once  out  of  the  better  liking: 

"Have  I  ever  failed?  But  tell  me  now,  Joe. 
What  is  it?  I  want  to  know  now." 

"No,  you  meet  me,"  he  said  with  a  sternness 
not  directed  at  her  and  far  above  the  level  of  the 
scene  in  which  he  was  taking  part. 

"But  I  cannot  wait,"  she  said  impatiently,  she 
who  never  before  had  been  impatient  with  him. 


57 


CHAPTER  VI 

AS  Joseph  Sumner  hurried  home,  the  sun  was 
at  his  back  and  threw  his  lengthened  shadow 
on  the  ground  before  him.  His  eyes  became 
strangely  riveted  on  that  shadow,  on  that  larger 
image  of  himself.  It  was  a  reality  there,  but  it 
was  a  reality  nowhere  else,  having  no  parentage  of 
flesh  and  blood,  but  only  its  ancestry  of  air  and 
light.  Yet  somehow  the  big  solar  photograph, 
alive  and  moving  rapidly  before  him  over  the  film 
of  grass,  fitted  the  scale  of  the  pictures  which  had 
been  before  his  mind  all  day.  As  a  shadow  at 
least  he  measured  up  heroically  to  those  great  pic 
tures. 

They  had  to  do  with  the  first  decisive  event  of 
his  life.  Beyond  that  event  lay  the  void  of  his 
early  childhood;  on  this  side  stretched  the  clear 
track  of  his  memory,  one  hard,  straight  road. 

It  was  the  night  his  father  and  his  brothers  had 

58 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

left  home,  riding  away  at  dead  of  night  be 
fore  the  first  eager  gathering  of  men  into  the  first 
Southern  armies.  They  had  not  come  home  to 
supper  that  evening,  and  when  he  went  to  bed, 
still  they  had  not  returned.  The  first  thing  he 
knew  after  that  was  being  gently  shaken  by  the 
shoulder.  Not  fully  aroused  out  of  his  sleep,  he 
heard  a  voice  saying,  "Don't  wake  him."  It  was 
one  of  his  brothers  who  spoke.  Another  voice 
closer  to  his  ear  insisted,  "Yes,  we  must  wake  him; 
we  must  all  tell  him  good-by."  His  shoulder  was 
shaken  again,  and  he  was  gently  pulled  over  on 
his  back.  Then  he  opened  his  eyes  and  sat  up  be 
wildered  and  saw,  gathered  at  his  bedside,  his 
father  and  his  brothers,  with  their  hats  on,  and 
hunting-belts  and  hunting-boots,  all  looking  at 
him  very  grave.  His  father  had  lifted  him  in 
his  arms  and  carried  him  across  the  room  to  the 
bureau  where  a  solitary  candle  burned,  and  had 
turned  him  around  so  that  the  light  would  fall  on 
his  face  to  get  a  good  look  at  him,  he  rubbing  his 
eyes  and  confused  as  to  what  it  all  meant.  Then 
his  father,  his  splendid,  glorious  father,  had  said : 

59 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

"Little  man,  I  am  going  away  to-night,  and 
your  brothers  are  going  with  me,  and  we  may 
be  away  a  long  time."  He  stopped  there,  then 
went  on:  "It  might  be  longer,  longer.  Now, 
then,  you  will  be  the  only  man  of  us  left  at  home ; 
and  you  will  be  at  the  head  of  everything;  and 
you  are  going  to  do  your  best,  are  n't  you,  your 
very  best?' 

He  had  answered,  not  understanding  much 
about  it : 

"Yes,  Papa." 

"You  are  going  to  take  care  of  your  mother? 
You  are  going  to  be  a  good  son  to  your  mother?" 

"Yes,  Papa." 

"And  as  fast  as  you  grow  up,  you  are  going  to 
take  your  father's  place,  and  take  your  brothers' 
places,  and  be  all  of  us  to  her  as  nearly  as  you 
can?" 

"Yes,  Papa." 

"I  know  it.  I  know  it.  Well  then,  little  man, 
God  keep  you  and  God  keep  her  and  God  keep 
both  of  you  together,  till  all  of  us  come  back — or 
till  some  of  us — or  none  of  us — " 

60 


As  he  entered  the  yard,  Lucy  Morehead  was  out 
there  watering  the  flowers. 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

"Yes,  Papa." 

His  father  had  set  him  down  on  the  floor  and 
turned  away,  and  then  his  brothers  had  stooped 
one  after  the  other  and  told  him  good-by : 

"You  must  manage  everything,  Joe." 

"I  will." 

"You  may  have  the  shot-gun.  Keep  it 
cleaned." 

"I  will." 

"And  don't  forget  about  the  dogs.  Be  sure  to 
feed  the  dogs." 

"I  will." 

"Take  good  care  of  mother,  Joe !" 

"I  will." 

Then  they  went  out  on  the  porch.  The  moon 
was  shining  away  up  in  the  sky,  and  it  must  have 
been  about  midnight,  and  everything  was  bright 
as  day;  the  shadows  under  the  trees  and  bushes 
were  the  only  darkness.  Hitched  to  the  fence, 
saddled,  were  five  of  the  best  horses.  Out  there 
on  the  porch  the  parting  had  taken  place  between 
them  and  his  mother.  As  each  propped  his  rifle 
against  the  wall  of  the  house  and  advanced,  she 

63 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

clutched  him  to  her  breast.  All  were  tall,  but  she 
seemed  to  tower  above  them,  as  against  her  heart 
one  by  one  she  consecrated  them  to  battle.  Each 
as  he  left  her  arms  stepped  aside,  grasped  his  rifle, 
and  waited.  Then  his  father  and  mother,  with 
their  arms  around  each  other  a  long  time,  and  low 
swift  broken  words  from  each  to  each.  When 
their  parting  was  over,  his  four  brothers  made  of 
themselves  a  group  about  their  father,  and  all  five 
tramped  stolidly  out  of  the  porch  along  the  pave 
ment,  and  were  mounted  and  gone,  riding  furi 
ously  southward,  with  the  horses'  feet  fainter  and 
fainter  across  the  fields. 

His  mother  stood  there  on  the  edge  of  the 
porch,  the  moonlight  pouring  down  upon  her — 
stood  there  as  white  as  death,  her  long  hair,  yel 
lowed  by  the  moonlight,  falling  down  over  one 
shoulder,  as  still  and  as  white  as  death.  Not  till 
they  were  gone  too  far  to  turn  back,  not  till  the 
last  sound  from  them  had  died  out,  did  she  move. 
Then  she  stretched  out  her  arms  to  them  and 
down  her  face  her  tears  ran.  Again  and  again 
her  arms  were  flung  out,  imploring  them  to  come 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

back,  sending  them  away,  in  the  tempest  of  her 
grief  and  rage. 

He  stood  apart  on  the  porch,  with  the  moon 
beams  pouring  down  on  him,  too,  awed  and  watch 
ing  her  and  waiting.  His  heart  ached  to  feel 
about  himself  the  arms  that  had  enwrapped  the 
others  and  had  made  them  so  sacredly  one.  But 
in  that  breaking  up  of  the  family  he  was  over 
looked,  left  out.  She  acted  her  tragedy  before 
him  as  though  no  eye  beheld  her  in  her  soli 
tude.  And  so,  having  no  one  else  to  turn  to,  he 
began  from  that  hour  to  turn  toward  himself,  to 
get  prematurely  old  and  strong,  to  know  lone 
liness  and  its  strength. 

Since  that  night  Time,  like  some  vast  measur 
ing-worm  of  devastation,  had  stretched  and 
crumpled  its  length  again  and  again  along  the 
road  of  history,  spanning  off  its  dumb  allotment 
of  the  awful  years;  and  never  once  had  the  red 
flames  of  war  wrapping  the  nation  gone  out,  never 
had  carnage  ceased,  nor  hate,  nor  tears. 

And  now  on  this  day  when  he  was  seventeen 
years  old,  he  had  been  putting  two  great  pictures 

65 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

side  by  side :  that  September  night  when  his  father 
and  his  brothers  had  ridden  away  to  swell  the  first 
flushed  armies  of  the  onset,  and  this  September 
day  when  far  to  the  south  of  him  stretched  the 
last  of  the  thin,  wasted,  ragged  ones. 

Such  were  the  vast  dramas  of  life  and  history 
glowing  in  his  brain  as  he  hurried  along  the  foot 
path,  carrying  his  few  spoonfuls  of  borrowed  lard, 
with  the  sun  at  his  back  and  his  lengthened 
shadow  on  the  ground. 

Hardly  could  he  keep  his  eyes  off  that  big 
shadow,  that  coveted  aggrandizement  of  stature, 
that  incorporeal  betterment  of  sun  and  dust.  If 
Nature  ever,  as  men  of  old  believed,  sends  augu 
ries  to  her  children  from  far  beyond  the  counsels 
of  humanity,  this  may  have  been  one  from  her  to 
him. 


66 


CHAPTER  VII 

plain  early  supper  had  been  eaten  by 
A  mother  and  son  in  almost  unbroken  silence. 
His  thoughts  were  on  the  terrible  thing  he  meant 
to  tell  her  when  they  were  together  again  out  on 
the  porch,  where  they  usually  sat  till  bedtime.  As 
he  went  over  this,  trying  to  arrange  it  in  his  dis 
tracted  brain  as  best  he  could,  deep  emotions — 
emotions  he  had  never  known,  were  unlocked  in 
him.  Gladly  he  took  refuge  in  the  silence  of  the 
meal  lest  he  betray  himself.  There  was  some 
thing  that  he  could  not  hide,  though  he  did  not 
know  this :  that  as  with  his  troubled  face  he  sat  at 
his  end  of  the  table,  his  poor  coarse  spoon,  his 
knife  and  plate,  his  tumbler  and  his  bread — not 
because  they  were  poor  and  coarse,  but  because 
they  were  unblessed  by  tenderness,  helped  to  make 
a  revealing  portrait  of  him  amid  those  familiar 
surroundings.  The  beholder  would  at  a  glance 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

have  comprehended  that  here  were  a  human  soul 
and  a  human  lot  which  had  long  dwelt  together 
but  had  never  met.  Choking  down  what  little 
of  his  supper  he  could  eat  at  all,  he  soon  rose  with 
a  muttered  excuse  for  his  absence,  and  went  out  to 
finish  some  work  for  the  night. 

His  mother  had  not  remarked  anything  unusual 
in  his  demeanor  because  her  own  thoughts  were 
violently  engrossed  with  what  she  had  just  read  in 
her  paper.  Some  intelligence  even  there  drove 
from  her  mind  the  disagreeable  incident  of  the 
afternoon  with  Lucy  Morehead.  She  had  not 
forgotten  that  incident;  she  did  not  intend  to  for 
get  it.  It  had  affected  her  treatment  of  him  upon 
his  return  and  her  manner  toward  him  ever  since ; 
the  whole  suspected  meaning  of  it  lay  as  a  spark 
near  her  anger,  which  at  its  worst  was  blind  fury. 

The  news  in  the  paper  was  that  her  husband's 
brother  had  just  bought  near  town  another  splen 
did  farm,  the  war-cheapened  bluegrass  acres  of  a 
war-ruined  Southern  family;  the  acquisition  was 
further  proof  of  his  rapidly  growing  wealth,  due 
to  his  influence  at  Federal  headquarters,  where  he 

68 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

had  large  commissary  contracts  with  the  Govern 
ment.  While  his  wealth  thus  grew,  he  was  at  the 
same  time  the  clue  to  her  own  deepening  poverty. 
He  accounted  for  her  supper  that  evening,  such  as 
one  of  her  former  negroes  would  never  have  seen ; 
he  was  responsible  for  the  house  stripped  to  the 
barest  comforts;  his  restraining  hand  was  on  the 
empty  stables,  the  empty  barns,  the  ruined 
farm. 

At  the  outbreak  of  the  Rebellion  her  husband 
had  held  immense  Southern  investments,  with 
capital  partly  borrowed  from  this  brother  as  a 
loan  secured  by  a  mortgage  on  the  estate.  Those 
investments  the  declaration  of  war  had  instantly 
rendered  worthless.  The  two  brothers,  who  all 
their  lives  had  been  inseparable  friends,  now  sun 
dered  by  politics,  were  turned  into  implacable  ene 
mies.  Her  husband,  though  on  the  verge 
of  bankruptcy,  hurried  South,  and  soon  after 
ward  took  his  sons  with  him  into  the  army;  his 
brother's  sons  went  into  the  Northern  army;  and 
thus  the  breach  widened  into  one  of  those,  com 
mon  enough  in  the  Kentucky  of  that  time,  which 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

knew  neither  charity,  nor  pity,  nor  mercy.  No 
one  wished  to  be  the  beneficiary  of  these  virtues; 
no  one  would  have  accepted  their  divine  fruits. 

Her  husband  and  her  sons  fell  in  the  first  bat 
tles.  Not  long  after,  one  cold  rainy  autumn  day, 
there  was  a  forced  sale  of  everything  except  what 
the  law  provided  that  she  might  keep — the  law 
which  knows  to  what  limits  human  nature  will  go 
and  has  to  stop  it  on  the  way.  Next  her  hus 
band's  brother,  who,  under  an  old  fraternal  will 
never  revoked,  held  a  joint  administrator's  right, 
took  legal  steps  to  acquire  the  management  of  the 
farm.  He  undertook  to  do  this  either  by  moving 
upon  it  himself  or  by  placing  it  under  the  con 
trol  of  an  overseer.  She  fought  him  in  this  ag 
gression.  She  undertook  the  sole  leasing  and 
management  herself.  He  opposed  and  thwarted 
her.  And  now  years  had  passed,  and  neither  had 
yielded.  Meanwhile  all  her  servants  had  de 
serted  except  one  woman,  her  personal  domestic; 
they  had  deserted,  and  some  of  the  best  trained 
had  been  taken  into  his  household — her  cook,  her 
house  girl,  her  coachman.  Thus  everything  that 

70 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

could  rot  rotted,  and  everything  that  could  pro 
duce  produced  weeds. 

Always  any  great  civil  war  is  two  wars:  the 
war  of  armies  in  the  field  and  the  war  of  those 
who  remain  at  home.  The  first  often  betters  hu 
man  nature  by  the  exercise  of  the  elements  of  its 
strength  and  by  its  struggle  in  some  great  cause, 
covering  the  welfare  and  the  fate  of  a  nation. 
The  second  invariably  debases  by  the  contest  for 
personal  advantage  and  the  pursuit  of  revenge. 
When  a  war  ends,  those  who  survive  battles  may 
be  better,  those  who  survive  quarrels  are  worse. 
Soldiers  return  home  forgiving  and  tolerant; 
civilians  remain  embittered  and  vindictive. 

She  ate  her  crust  with  her  thoughts  on  her 
enemy,  on  one  more  revolution  of  the  iron  wheel 
of  war  and  the  golden  wheel  of  fortune,  bearing 
him  higher,  carrying  her  lower. 

As  she  rose  from  the  table  an  impulse  prob 
ably  derived  from  these  thoughts  led  her  to  step 
out  upon  the  front  porch.  There  at  this  hour  in 
former  years  the  family,  reassembled  after  the 
separations  of  the  day,  were  wont  to  give  loose  rein 

71 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

to  their  animal  spirits,  fun-loving  dispositions. 
She  remained  a  moment  only,  solitary  apparition 
of  a  vanished  society.  As  she  had  opened  the 
parlor  door,  she  had  torn  to  pieces  immense  cob 
webs  spun  across  the  threshold.  From  the  rose 
bush  half-fallen  about  the  porch-steps  long  rank 
shoots  crossed  the  air  and  pointed  at  her,  driving 
her  back :  wild  nature  was  returning  to  riot  over  a 
civilization  which  once  had  conquered  it,  and  she 
shrank  back  into  the  house  as  though  herself  as 
sailed  by  the  ancient,  ever-young  armies  of  Na 
ture.  Returning  to  her  customary  seat  on  the 
side-porch,  she  sat  there  slowly  rocking,  her  hands, 
emptied  of  work,  grasping  the  arms  of  the  chair. 

Before  her  the  direction  was  due  south,  and  far 
southward,  with  a  sudden  weary  wish  to  forget 
her  troubles,  great  and  small,  old  and  new,  she 
now  sent  the  tide  of  her  heart's  yearning. 

The  scene  which  rose  before  her  was  the  South 
ern  camps,  those  sinking  regiments  of  spent  youths, 
those  shattered  battalions  of  old  men,  eating  their 
soldier  suppers.  What  had  they  to  eat  as  they 
sat  about  their  ragged  tents  or  sprawled  on  the 

72 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

grass  near  their  tattered  flags  in  their  battle-stained 
gray  jackets,  many  of  which  at  the  outset  had  been 
decorated  with  buttons  of  solid  gold?  She  could 
see  them  smoking,  laughing,  making  fun  of  hunger 
and  hardship,  they  who  had  been  heirs  to  mil 
lions  and  owners  of  the  wealth  of  half  the  conti 
nent.  Her  imagination  led  her  among  them  like 
a  guide,  showing  picture  after  picture.  Off  there 
a  group  of  shapely  young  dare-devils  mockingly 
surrounded  one  who  was  grilling  a  dried  herring 
on  half  a  canteen.  Yonder,  withdrawn  from  the 
rest,  crouched  a  huge  fellow  with  a  torso  of  a  bull 
wrapped  in  his  overcoat  though  the  evening  was 
warm,  its  cape  pulled  down  over  his  face  like  a 
cowl,  the  desire  of  things  far  away  maddening 
him.  Vividly  she  could  see  some  gray-haired 
man  with  a  drink  of  water  in  one  hand,  a  ration 
in  the  other,  recalling  a  hushed  moment  at  home 
and  the  bowed  heads  and  his  blessing  on  the  stately 
meal.  And  then  the  white,  patient  faces  of  the 
sick,  the  ghastly,  brave  faces  of  the  wounded! 
Ministering  to  these  the  well,  the  unwounded; 
trying  to  nurse  them,  trying  to  tempt  their  appe- 

73 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

tites?  Men  bathing  the  faces  of  other  men  with 
a  freshly  cooled  cloth,  some  man  slipping  an  arm 
under  some  other  man  and  trying  to  lift  him  up 
and  straighten  his  blanket  and  comb  his  hair 
where  it  had  gotten  tangled  with  the  tossing  of  the 
head  all  day. 

She  could  particularly  distinguish  here  and 
there  green  boys  who  lately  had  arrived  in  camp, 
who,  as  the  older  members  of  the  family  had 
fallen,  could  not  be  kept  at  home.  Perhaps 
among  them,  almost  overlooked  by  his  bigger, 
noisier  comrades,  some  quiet  one  who  might  be 
there  without  having  been  happy  with  his  mother, 
and  thus  with  no  wish  to  remember  her  while  he 
marched  or  when  he  lay  down  to  sleep.  If  she 
could  have  reached  such  a  camp,  she  would  have 
pushed  by  the  others  and  have  made  her  way* 
straight  to  him. 


74 


CHAPTER  VIII 

JOSEPH  SUMNER  came  around  the  house 
and  took  his  seat  on  the  edge  of  the  porch 
where  Lucy  Morehead  had  sat.  Nothing  was  said 
for  a  while.  There  was  intense  stillness.  From 
beneath  the  rotting  porch-steps  a  toad  which  lived 
there  hopped  out  and  with  short  jumps  went  down 
the  grass-grown  pavement.  Every  evening  he 
hopped  out  and  went  down  the  pavement  and 
hopped  back.  Joseph  Sumner's  eyes  followed  cu 
riously  the  departure  of  the  toad.  Finally  she, 
with  half -unconscious  exercise  of  an  old  habit  of 
mind  at  this  hour,  asked  a  question :  it  was  a  trib 
ute  to  the  routine  of  former  discipline  on  the  farm. 

"Have  you  finished  your  work,  Joe?" 

"I  have  finished  it." 

It  did  not  escape  her 'that  he  answered  with  un 
usual  composure,  that  his  words  were  stiffened 
by  an  extraordinary  significance.  While  she  half 

75 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

pondered  the  meaning  of  this,  he  opened  the  con 
versation  on  his  side : 

"Mother,  do  you  know  how  old  I  am  to 
day?" 

The  question  brought  to  her  attention  the  dis 
agreeable  subject  of  the  afternoon.  The  repeti 
tion  of  it  reenforced  her  suspicion  that  there  ex 
isted  some  kind  of  understanding  to  rebuke  her  as 
a  mother  for  her  treatment  of  her  own  son.  Lucy 
Morehead  had  asked  the  question  in  a  tone  of 
sweet-natured  reproach;  her  son's  tone  carried  no 
feeling  whatsoever.  He  spoke  as  though  he  real 
ized  that  his  birthday  was  a  very  small  matter  to 
her,  which  naturally  might  be  overlooked.  She 
liked  neither  the  girl's  interference  nor  her  son's 
indifference,  but  between  the  two  she  liked  his  in 
difference  less.  It  was  galling  that  he  should  re 
fer  to  his  birthday  apologetically.  His  doing  so 
was  part  of  a  submissiveness,  a  kind  of  humility 
in  him  that  had  often  of  late  stung  her.  Appar 
ently  it  grew  in  him,  this  submissiveness,  for  as  a 
mere  child  he  had  been  a  little  yellow  hornet  of 
passions. 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

She  answered  as,  indeed,  she  naturally  might 
answer : 

"I  think  I  am  the  one  who  ought  to  know." 

"Do  you  remember  something  I  said  to  you 
when  I  was  fifteen4?" 

"No,  I  do  not  especially  remember  anything 
you  said  to  me  when  you  were  fifteen." 

His  comment  was  a  little  wistful: 

"I  thought  it  was  something  you  would  remem 
ber.  I  hoped  you  would.  I  told  you  that  if  the 
war  lasted  until  I  was  seventeen,  I  should  want 
to  join  the  army.  You  don't  remember  that 
now?' 

"No,  I  do  not  remember  it  now," 

"Very  well,  then,  Mother,"  he  said,  aroused 
a  degree — "very  well.  But  I  am  seventeen  years 
old  to-day,  and  I  want  to  ask  you  whether  it  is 
not  time  that  I  went?" 

"Went  where4?" 

"To  join  the  army." 

"What  army4?" 

"The  Southern  army.  Don't  you  think  it's 
time  I  went  into  the  Southern  army4?" 

77 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

"I  do  not.  Why  do  you  ask  me  foolish  ques 
tions,  Joe?" 

He  asked  another  with  some  quickness: 

"When  do  you  think  I  ought  to  go?" 

She  replied  with  some  quickness: 

"I  do  not  think  anything  about  it." 

He  pressed  her  still  more  quickly: 

"Then  you  do  not  think  I  ought  to  go  at  all?" 

Her  reply  was  instantaneous : 

"Certainly  not." 

He  sat  looking  at  her  like  a  person  who  with 
out  warning  had  been  struck  on  the  head  with  a 
bludgeon,  and  for  a  moment  does  not  realize  what 
has  happened  to  him  or  what  to  do.  Neverthe 
less,  from  the  first  instant  he  did  realize  this,  that 
she  did  not  even  think  of  him  in  connection  with 
the  war.  For  her  there  was  in  him  no  promise  of 
the  soldier,  no  future  of  the  fighting  man.  That 
call,  which  the  whole  civilized  world  as  a  mar 
veling  listener  had  heard  time  and  again,  to  youths 
of  the  South  to  leave  their  homes  for  the  battle 
fields  though  but  to  die  there  as  fathers  and  older 
brothers  had  died — that  call  was  not  meant  for 

78 


He   was   his    own   man.   his   own    master. 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

his  ear  and  was  never  to  stir  his  soul.  His  place 
was  at  home,  a  solitary  little  farm-hand,  doing 
what  farming  he  could;  working  about  the  house, 
about  the  stable,  cutting  weeds,  raising  a  few 
vegetables,  and  carrying  some  of  them  to  market, 
feeding  the  cow  frozen  fodder  of  winter  morn 
ings,  sometimes  putting  on  an  apron  and  churn 
ing:  his  best  days,  his  holidays,  being  those  when 
he  hired  himself  to  a  neighbor  at  harvest-time  be 
cause  negroes  were  not  to  be  had  at  any  price,  thus 
making  a  little  pocket-money  for  himself.  He 
sat  there  stunned,  and  with  the  pallor  of  the  sick 
on  his  face ;  in  his  eyes  the  strange  darkness  that  is 
sometimes  the  pathos  of  the  sick. 

The  toad,  having  traveled  to  its  ends  of  the 
earth,  came  hopping  back  along  the  pavement, 
its  puffed,  foolish  eyes  searching  its  little  world 
of  air,  its  short,  flabby  jumps  the  measurements 
of  its  destiny,  its  tender  tongue  its  only  blade 
against  death. 

Joseph  Sumner  sat  up  straighter  against  the 
pillar  of  the  porch,  and,  looking  with  sudden  ap 
peal  at  his  mother,  asked  her  a  question.  His 

81 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

lips  quivered,  his  voice  nearly  failed  him,  and  his 
face  was  ashen. 

"You  think,  then,  that  I  ought  never  to  go'?" 

"Certainly  not." 

"Why,  Mother?  Why  do  you  think  that  of 
me?" 

The  words  were  torn  from  him  as  a  cry  of  an 
guish. 

She  did  not  answer.  She  had  definite  reasons 
and  she  had  vague  feelings.  He  was  little,  he 
was  young,  he  had  never  shot  a  gun,  the  only  one 
in  the  house  having  soon  been  taken  away  by  the 
Federal  authorities.  He  had  never  in  his  life 
killed  anything  but  vegetables  and  weeds.  She 
had  never  supposed  the  time  would  come  when  he 
would  wish  to  point  a  loaded  musket  at  a  live 
grown  man  and  actually  pull  the  trigger.  In  the 
simple  primer  of  his  life  she  had  nowhere  read  of 
his  plotting  an  attack  on  the  military  power  of 
the  United  States,  that  he  was  of  a  mind  to  go 
after  Grant. 

The  roots  of  the  whole  matter,  however,  pene 
trated  more  deeply  into  the  soil  of  human  nature, 

82 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

out  of  which  a  mere  workman's  spade  will  some 
times  turn  up  things  surprising  and  not  pleasant 
to  look  at;  and  about  him  there  were  in  her  own 
nature  two  such  things,  not  good  to  contemplate 
or  to  write  of,  either,  but  thrown  here  to  the  sur 
face  as  dark  growths  that  happily  die  soonest 
upon  exposure  to  the  sun. 

This  was  one:  that  from  the  time  she  was  left 
alone  with  him  he  had  given  up  his  out-door  play, 
his  all-day  followings  after  whatever  was  of  in 
terest  on  the  farm,  and  had  begun  to  hang 
around  her,  waiting  for  anything  she  might  tell 
him  to  do.  Humanly  he  turned  himself  over  to 
her  as  wax  to  be  molded  to  her  will  and  needs. 
But  perhaps  human  nature  may  not  often  be  in 
trusted  with  what  never  resists  it.  Perhaps  no 
human  being  is  quite  worthy  to  live  long  with 
another  who  submits.  Perhaps  whatever  serves 
does  so  at  its  peril,  and  only  what  rules  is  safe. 

The  other  difficulty  took  this  dark  shape :  that 
the  things  he  did  for  her  were  such  as  her  other 
sons  had  never  done;  her  negroes  had  done  them. 
The  older  boys  had  been  young  lords  of  the  land. 

83 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

And  his  very  contentedness  in  this  servitude,  the 
naturalness  with  which  he  fitted  into  it,  affected 
her  opinion  of  him  a  little,  lowered  it  just  a  little. 
For  human  nature  finds  it  hard  to  recognize  on 
the  earth  a  few  things  which  seem  to  arrive  upon 
it  as  proofs  of  diviner  things  elsewhere.  Through 
its  long  history  it  has  grown  used  to  the  one  old 
mixture  of  good  and  evil;  and  if  anything  wholly 
good,  entirely  noble,  comes  its  way,  since  it  can 
not  discover  the  familiar  mixture,  it  will  imagine 
accompanying  evil  and  make  the  mixture.  Thus 
invariably  the  things  in  human  life  most  mis 
judged,  least  understood,  are  the  highest  things; 
the  martyrs  of  the  race  have  had  the  fate  of  its 
criminals. 

He  was  now  in  the  position  of  doing  gladly  for 
her  the  things  she  had  been  accustomed  to  order 
her  slaves  to  do,  and  insensibly  in  her  thoughts 
of  him  he  had  become  entangled  with  slavish 
work.  Unconsciously  the  things  done  and  the 
doer  of  them  do  become  bound  up  for  us  as  within 
one  iron  ring  of  an  idea.  A  cobbler,  meet  him 
where  we  may,  does  he  ever  fail  to  suggest  old 

84 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

shoes'?  The  country  miller  of  bygone  years,  did 
he  not  look  strangely  out  of  place  when  on  Sun 
day  morning,  the  meal  brushed  off,  he  walked  into 
church ?  Was  n't  it  just  a  little  odd  that  a  miller 
should  think  of  wanting  to  go  to  heaven?  The 
blacksmith  of  to-day,  can  we  see  him  chosen  fore 
man  of  a  grand  jury  without  our  smile,  as  though 
he  would  be  likely  to  go  at  the  administration  of 
justice  with  forge  and  hammer,  branding  the 
guilty  with  a  hot  iron  and  nailing  a  pair  of  new 
shoes  to  the  feet  of  the  innocent? 

The  yoke  of  the  farm,  the  yoke  of  the  common 
toiler  of  the  fields  which  bends  the  neck  down  till 
it  stays  bent  down,  had  that  descended  on  the 
neck  of  Joseph  Sumner?  Had  he  become  lost  to 
her  for  the  heroic  through  complete  self-sacrifice 
to  the  servile?  Nothing  in  him  glorious  but 
duty,  and  simple  duty  so  little  glorious? 

She  did  not  answer.  The  terrible  anguish  in 
his  cry  had  gone  through  her,  of  course,  and  it 
may  have  been  the  very  anguish  of  it  that  most 
kept  her  from  replying;  the  whole  subject  were 
for  his  sake  best  dropped. 

85 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

Meantime  there  he  sat,  waiting  for  that  answer, 
his  lips  white,  the  look  of  wounded  devotion  in 
his  eyes,  which  never  forsook  her  face.  And  it 
must  have  been  that  as  thus  he  waited  and  as  thus 
she  could  not  break  the  silence  that  more  and 
more  plainly  seemed  meant  only  to  spare  him — 
it  must  have  been  that  some  great  vital  thing  in 
his  life  came  then  and  there  to  the  end  of  its  ex 
istence. 

For  the  image  of  ourselves  that  we  see  in  the 
heart  of  another  is  what  our  love  lives  by  or  dies 
of,  and  Joseph  Sumner  had  discovered  in  the 
mind  of  his  mother  an  image  of  himself  which 
she  believed  to  be  the  true  one  but  which  wrought 
upon  him  an  effect  instantaneous  and  horrible. 
He  had  recovered  his  senses  now,  his  mind  had 
begun  to  act  with  inconceivable  swiftness,  and 
while  she  kept  silent  with  many  thoughts,  he  was 
silent  with  one — his  hatred  of  that  image.  Out 
of  the  depths  of  all  that  he  was  rose  a  murderous 
passion  to  attack  that  image,  to  spring  at  it  and 
tear  it  out  of  her — that  image. 

When  next  he  spoke,  his  voice  had  incredibly 
86 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

changed.  There  was  in  it  no  appeal  to  her.  The 
tenderness  had  gone  out  of  it;  there  was  a  sudden 
loss  of  lifelong  respect  for  her,  and  there  was  a 
straight  sharp  challenge: 

"Why,  Mother?  Why  do  you  think  I  ought 
never  to  go  into  the  Southern  army?" 

Again  she  declined  to  answer. 

"Why?  Why?"  he  exclaimed  excitedly, 
pressing  straight  at  the  core  of  her. 

His  persistence  irritated  her,  his  stubbornness 
in  trying  to  draw  out  things  that  would  mortify 
him.  To  end  the  folly  of  it  all,  she  laid  hold, 
notvunkindly,  upon  the  first  reason  her  mind  en 
countered,  not  a  full  answer,  but  better  than  a 
full  answer: 

"Have  n't  you  your  work  here  to  do?" 

He  replied  instantly,  with  the  same  composure 
as  at  first: 

"I  have  had  work  here  to  do." 

The  tone  nettled  her  and  she  inquired  with 
ironical  forbearance: 

"And  has  the  work  come  to  an  end?" 

"It  has.     The  work  has  come  to  an  end." 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

This,  instead  of  further  provoking  her,  quieted 
her. 

Her  troubles  with  each  of  her  other  sons — and 
she  had  passed  through  a  mother's  full  experi 
ence — had  begun  as  each  passed  from  clear,  placid 
boyhood  into  turbulent  youth.  She  had  learned 
to  sit  quiet  through  such  storms,  refusing  to  see 
them  while  they  lasted  or  to  remember  them  when 
they  were  gone;  and  she  was  too  wise  now  to 
throw  away  former  wisdom.  She  suddenly  won 
dered  whether  this  was  not  a  first  outbreak  of 
his,  happening  in  conjunction  with  a  birthday 
and  a  disagreeable  birthday  incident — her  dis 
ciplining  him  for  his  forgetfulness.  Therefore 
when  she  next  spoke  she  addressed  him  as  though 
he  had  not  said  anything  at  all,  as  though  they 
were  just  beginning  a  conversation.  Her  tone 
had  the  familiar  quietness  with  which  every  even 
ing  she  laid  out  her  plans  for  the  next  day. 

"Joe,"  she  said,  "when  you  go  to  town  to-mor 
row,  I  want  you  to  get — " 

"Stop,  Mother!"  he  cried,  springing  up  from 
his  seat. 

88 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

He  crossed  the  pavement  and  stood  in  the  yard 
in  front  of  her  chair,  and  not  once  during  what 
followed  did  he  move,  being  fixed  there  in  body 
as  in  resolve. 

"Stop !"  he  repeated  as  though  eager  to  save  her 
from  possible  humiliation.  "Do  not  say  any 
thing  to  me  about  to-morrow.  I  do  not  wish  to 
leave  undone  anything  you  had  ever  told  me 
to  do;  and  if  you  had  told  me  to  do  anything 
for  to-morrow,  it  would  ring  in  my  ears  for  the 
rest  of  my  life  because  I  had  not  done  it.  Stop, 
then;  let  us  try  to  come  to  an  understanding." 

She  stopped  rocking  at  least;  amazement 
stopped  her.  What  she  might  have  said  she  was 
not  to  know;  he  gave  her  no  time. 

"Mother,"  he  said,  with  a  clear  ring  in  his 
voice,  "I  do  not  think  that  perhaps  you  have  ever 
understood  me.  But  no  matter,  the  time  had  not 
come.  Now  the  time  has  come,  and  it  is  neces 
sary.  I  shall  try  to  make  you  understand.  The 
day  I  was  fifteen  years  old  I  said  to  you  that  if  the 
war  lasted  until  I  was  seventeen,  I  should  want 
to  join  the  Southern  army.  I  am  not  surprised 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

that  you  do  not  remember.  You  made  me  no 
reply  then,  and  you  may  not  even  have  heard 
me;  your  thoughts  may  have  been  on  my  father 
and  my  brothers.  I  have  read  your  thoughts 
about  them  so  long;  my  thoughts  have  been  with 
them,  too.  I  have  read  your  thoughts  about  many 
other  things.  You  have  had  more  than  enough 
to  think  of  without  thinking  too  much  about  me. 
You  made  me  no  reply,  and  I  had  about  half  a 
mind  to  go  then;  but  many  things  kept  me  here. 
When  I  was  sixteen  I  came  much  nearer  going; 
still,  some  things  held  me  back.  Besides,  I  did 
not  wish  to  go  without  your  consent,  and  I  did 
not  believe  you  would  give  your  consent.  To-day 
I  am  seventeen  years  old,  and  I  have  but  one 
feeling:  that  it  is  not  my  duty  to  stay  at  home 
any  longer;  it  is  my  duty  to  go  into  the  army." 

With  this  announcement  of  the  greatest  plan 
of  his  life  he  was  content  to  pause  a  moment; 
to  him  it  was  grave  enough  to  justify  some  at 
tention.  He  had  expected  that  it  would  over 
whelm  her.  On  the  contrary,  she  sat  looking  at 
him  without  the  slightest  change  of  expression 

90 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

and  merely  waited  for  him  to  go  on.  Having 
discovered  the  presence  in  him,  long  fostered,  of 
an  incredible  folly,  she  wished  to  let  him  utter 
his  whole  mind  about  it  as  the  quickest  way  of 
being  cured.  He  had  no  intention  to  keep  her 
waiting. 

"I  have  made  my  plans,"  he  said  briskly,  re 
turning  to  the  mere  business  of  it  all,  "but  I  have 
planned  first  for  you.  You  cannot  stay  here 
alone;  it  would  be  unsafe,  and,  besides,  some  one 
must  take  my  place.  Mother,  you  must  send  for 
my  uncle;  he  must  come  and  take  charge  of  the 
farm.  He  had  better  move  here  to  live." 

This  time  there  was  no  doubt  of  the  shock  his 
words  dealt.  But  she  never  took  her  eyes  from 
his  face.  He  continued  more  persuasively, 
mildly: 

"I  know  how  you  feel  toward  him,  and  I  know 
how  I  feel ;  but  it  will  be  better  to  let  him  come. 
I  have  done  what  I  could,  but  that  has  been  very 
little.  He  will  bring  his  stock  and  he  will  bring 
his  negroes.  Some  of  them  were  our  negroes; 
they  know  your  ways ;  you  trained  them.  Almost 

91 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

any  one  of  them  will  be  able  to  do  for  you  more 
than  I  have  done.  My  plan  is  that  you  have  him 
come,  no  matter  how  you  feel  about  him." 

She  stood  up.  She  was  angry  at  last.  He  had 
gone  too  far.  He  counseled  her  to  disregard 
things  too  great  for  him  to  understand.  He  pre 
sumed  to  dictate  to  her  about  family  wounds  and 
wrongs,  such  wounds  and  wrongs  as  are  sacred 
to  the  old  and  become  doubly  sacred  when  bound 
up  with  memories  of  the  dead  and  never  to  be 
righted. 

She  rose  and  she  was  angry  and  she  was  afraid 
of  her  anger.  Her  caution  was  that  of  a  man 
who  declines  to  be  drawn  into  a  quarrel  for  fear 
that  the  quarrel  may  become  a  fight  and  in  the 
fight  he  may  overuse  his  strength  and  kill.  She 
faced  him  and  she  lifted  just  one  finger. 

"Not  another  word!"  she  commanded  almost 
inaudibly,  laying  her  command  on  him  as  though 
he  were  a  child  and  as  though  she  stopped  a 
child's  utterance  with  the  blow  of  her  will. 
Then  she  turned  to  enter  the  house. 

"Stop,  Mother!"  he  called  out  again.  His 
92 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

tone  was  inconceivable  to  her;  it  carried  an  un 
believable  authority.  Despite  herself  she  stopped 
and  turned  just  outside  her  door. 

"I  don't  want  you  to  go  in,  Mother,  and  I 
don't  want  you  to  go  away,"  he  said — "not  yet. 
Since  we  have  begun,  we  had  better  finish.  This 
had  to  come,  and  it  has  been  a  long  time  coming, 
a  long,  long  time.  Now  let 's  be  over  with  it 
once  and  for  all.  I  told  you  I  had  made  my 
plans.  But  I  must  know  your  plans.  Are  you 
willing  to  let  my  uncle  come4?" 

She  took  three  long  swift  steps  toward  him 
and  stopped.  Her  dried  freckled  skin  revealed 
under  it  the  ugly  stain  of  a  rush  of  blood;  her 
small  oval  amber  eyes  blazed;  they  blazed  like 
an  enraged  jaguar's.  She  forgot  the  boy  who 
stood  there  in  the  yard  baiting  her;  she  remem 
bered  nothing  but  old  family  quarrels.  Folding 
her  hands  in  front  of  her,  the  palm  of  one  lying 
upward  in  the  palm  of  the  other  as  though  she 
held  a  prayer-book,  in  a  voice  as  stilled  as  though 
she  faced  the  altar,  she  slowly  read  the  psalm  of 
her  hate: 

93 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

"Before  anything  he  sowed  on  this  land  could 
be  harvested,  I  would  pray  to  God  to  blight  the 
fields  and  my  prayer  would  be  answered.  Be 
fore  his  stock  should  drink  the  water  of  the  pond, 
I  would  take  the  mattock  and  dig  the  bank  away 
and  drain  the  pond  dry.  Before  his  negroes — 
my  negroes,  whom  he  has  hired — should  come 
back  into  the  cabins,  I  would  set  fire  to  the  cabins. 
Before  he  should  enter  this  house  to  live  in  it, 
I  would  burn  my  husband's  bed  and  the  nursery 
where  my  sons  were  cradled;  and  I  would  sit  out 
side  and  with  joy  watch  my  home,  my  shelter,  be 
come  a  pile  of  ashes." 

Joseph  Sumner  looked  at  his  mother  with  every 
faculty  tense  and  quivering.  Never  but  once  be 
fore  had  he  seen  her  as  he  saw  her  now — on  the 
night  his  father  and  his  brothers  had  ridden 
away.  And  the  never-healed  wound  she  had 
made  in  him  that  night  she  now  tore  open  and 
made  more  horrible.  She  spoke  over  his  head; 
again  he  was  overlooked,  left  out,  in  her  devotion 
to  the  family,  and  in  her  reckoning  with  its  ene 
mies.  All  at  once  she  remembered  him,  and  she 

94 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

looked  down  at  him  and  answered  him  casually: 

"Before  I  send  for  your  uncle,  every  weed  that 
can  grow  is  free  to  grow  and  everything  that  can 
rot  shall  rot." 

"Then  let  them  rot!"  he  cried,  his  own  anger 
bursting  out  at  her  that  she  still  put  him  aside, 
and  that  what  was  everything  to  him  was  nothing 
to  her.  "Let  them  rot!  Better  for  them  to  rot 
than  for  me  to  rot!" 

Her  eyes  descended  on  him  with  a  vivid  flash. 
They  rested  on  him  with  a  steady  blaze,  as  though 
she  would  scorch  him  with  scorn  that  he  could 
make  terms  with  his  father's  enemy. 

"Mother !"  he  started  in  again,  "the  night  my 
father  went  away — " 

"Don't  speak  to  me  about  your  father!"  she 
said,  shaking  her  finger  at  him.  "If  you  thought 
of  your  father  as  you  should,  you  would  not  think 
of  your  uncle  as  you  do.  And  you  would  remem 
ber  your  father's  last  words  to  you." 

He  raised  his  arm,  shook  his  finger  back  at 
her: 

"I  do  remember  my  father's  last  words  to  me ! 
95 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

He  told  me  to  stay  here  and  be  at  the  head  of 
everything.  Long  have  I  heard  those  words  of 
my  father,  and  long,  Mother,  have  I  heeded  them. 
But  I  do  not  hear  them  any  longer.  What  T 
now  hear  him  say  to  me  and  have  long  heard  him 
say  is :  'Not  there  at  home,  but  here  where  I  and 
your  brothers  fell.  Come  and  fill  one  of  these 
places,  come  and  fill  all  of  them,  if  you  can. 
Whatever  you  can  do  for  your  mother,  you  can 
do  better  here.  No  longer  try  to  take  our  places 
on  the  farm.  Every  man,  every  boy,  is  needed  on 
the  battle-field.'  That  is  what  I  hear  my  father 
say  to  me,  and  long  have  heard  him,  but  have  not 
heeded." 

There  may  have  been  for  her  a  breath  of  music 
in  this  that  struck  chords  of  music  in  herself,  that 
smote  the  harp  of  her  griefs.  Again  she  an 
swered  and  again  she  forgot  him ;  again  her  mind 
passed  from  the  little  scene  there  at  her  feet  to 
the  great  scene  of  the  nation  far  away.  She 
spoke  to  that: 

"The  war  is  nearly  closed.  It  cannot  last  much 
longer,  not  much  longer,  not  much.  When  it  is 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

over,  those  who  survive  will  go  upon  the  roll  of 
eternal  honor:  they  will  be  the  soldiers  of  all 
time.  But  before  it  closes  there  may  be  some 
who,  knowing  that  the  danger  is  past  and  hard 
ship  at  an  end,  will  steal  into  the  ranks  at  the 
last  hour  to  get  their  names  on  that  immortal 
list."  Now  again  she  remembered  him;  and  she 
bent  over  and  pointed  a  finger  straight  down  at 
him: 

"Would  you  like  to  be  one  of  those*?  Are  you 
going  to  try  to  claim  a  soldier's  glory  without 
having  fought  a  soldier's  battles'?  Do  you  wish 
to  go  down  in  history  honored  for  having  done 
— no  tiling?" 

He  was  beside  himself  with  rage.  He  hurled 
his  words  back  in  her  face : 

"Is  it  my  fault  that  I  am  not  older,  or  is  it 
yours  that  you  did  not  bear  me  sooner?  Did  I 
decide  when  I  was  to  be  begotten  or  when  I  was 
to  be  born?  Is  it  my  fault  that  the  war  began 
when  it  did  instead  of  beginning  when  it  did  not? 
If  it  is  soon  to  end,  then  the  sooner  I  am  in  it 
the  better.  Mother,  would  you  see  the  South 

97 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

whipped  and  me  not  facing  those  who  beat  her? 
If  this  war  ends  without  my  going  into  it,  what 
will  my  life  be*?  How  will  I  look  my  children 
in  the  eyes  when  they  ask  me  years  from  now  to 
tell  them  stories  about  it  and  when  I  say  to  them 
that  I  stayed  at  home;  that  I  kindled  fires,  fed 
the  turkeys,  cooked  slop  for  the  pigs  when  there 
were  any  pigs?  Are  you  willing  to  send  me 
through  my  life  along  that  road?"  His  nature 
broke  in  two,  and  part  of  it  flowed  back  to  her 
with  the  old  faltering  tenderness:  "But  I  want 
your  consent.  Send  me  away  as  you  sent  away 
each  of  my  brothers !" 

She  began  to  tremble  and  to  show  signs  of  dis 
tress.  Two  thoughts  may  have  pierced  her  like 
two  more  sorrows.  If  he  went,  none  would  be 
left,  nothing  would  remain  but  herself  and  deso 
lation.  And  if  he  never  came  back,  everything 
would  pass  into  the  possession  of  the  enemy  of 
them  all.  She  gathered  up  her  strength  and  re 
plied  to  his  pleading  with  all  the  more  of  iron 
resolve : 

"You  shall  never  have  my  consent." 

98 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

"Then  I  will  go  without  your  consent." 

She  strode  swiftly  to  the  edge  of  the  porch  and 
towered  over  him  with  all  her  authority,  with 
that  magnificence  of  will  which  of  old  had  ruled 
so  many  lives.  She  stood  there  over  him,  the  last 
person  in  the  world  on  whom  she  could  lay  any 
order,  over  whom  she  could  exercise  the  whole 
might  of  herself. 

"No!  You  hear  me,  Joseph?  No!  Now 
stop  it !" 

He  laughed  at  her.  He  railed  at  her  with 
mocking  as  though  he  were  half -crazy : 

"Forbid  me !  Tou  forbid  me !  Your  forbid 
ding  me  has  no  more  effect  than  if  I  did  not  know 
you.  You  stand  there  as  though  I  never  saw 
you."  Again  his  nature  broke  in  two,  and  this 
time  part  of  it  flowed  articulate  toward  duty: 
"I  have  to  go.  There  is  no  help  for  it,  not  in 
me.  If  I  were  in  heaven  and  could  get  out  of 
heaven,  I  would  go.  Because,"  he  said,  launch 
ing  at  her  the  last  power  of  his  soul,  "because  it 
is  right." 

Those  words  brought  back  to  her  the  same  past 
99 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

that  she  had  just  brought  back  to  him.  Her  hus 
band's  last  words  had  been :  "We  go,  dear  noble 
wife  and  comrade,  we  leave  you,  leave  everything, 
because  it  is  right:  there  is  no  help  in  us  for  it." 

Now  across  the  chasm  of  years  these  words  were 
caught  from  the  lips  of  the  dead  upon  the  lips 
of  the  living.  But  the  dead!  She  had  long 
cherished  a  strange  jealousy  about  those  dead. 
They  were  apart  from  the  present.  None  must 
draw  too  near  them.  Moreover,  her  anger  now 
swept  away  even  maternal  instincts: 

"Never  think  to  be  like  your  father  and  your 
brothers.  Don't  try." 

The  words  stung  him  as  with  a  poison  and  ren 
dered  him  frantic. 

"If  I  had  never  known  my  father,"  he  raved, 
"if  I  had  never  had  a  brother,  if  I  had  never  had 
my  own  mother,  I  would  go.  What  do  you 
think  of  me?"  he  shouted  at  her,  he  roared  at  her. 
"What  do  you  think  I  'm  made  of?  What  do 
you  think  is  in  me?  That  I  am  to  sit  here  on 
the  porch  of  evenings  like  the  toad  under  the  steps, 
satisfied  to  poke  out  its  tongue  at  a  fly  and  help- 

100 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

less  against  being  trod  on?  A  Kentucky  runt, 
the  cast-off  nubbin  of  my  fathers  blooH  ;tiid'yb\ir 
blood?' 

He  beat  her  in  the  face  with  his  words  as 
though  they  were  his  fists.  He  struck  her  with 
them  as  with  stones.  She  threw  up  her  hands 
before  her  eyes  and  turned  back  into  the  house. 

"Even  if  I  am,"  he  called  out  after  her,  "even 
if  I  'm  nothing  but  that,"  he  said  in  the  cooler 
voice  of  one  who  picks  up  some  little  clod  and 
tosses  it  at  the  back  of  another  whom  he  no  longer 
has  to  fight,  "even  if  I  'm  nothing  but  that,  I  will 
make  the  most  of  it." 

She  entered  the  house  brokenly,  desolately. 


101 


CHAPTER  IX 

IT  was  quarter  or  half  an  hour  later  and  Joseph 
Sumner  was  again  on  his  way  to  the  More- 
heads'. 

When  the  mind  is  stirred  to  its  depths,  its 
trifles  are  often  thrown  to  the  surface;  and  as  his 
mother  had  turned  desolately  away  from  him  and 
he  had  wheeled  rudely  away  from  her,  he  had 
recollected  that  after  all  his  work  was  not  fin 
ished:  on  this  forgetful  day  he  had  forgotten 
something  else  and  at  once  he  had  attended  to 
that.  Afterward  he  had  gone  up  to  his  little 
room,  bared  by  that  bankrupt  sale,  to  wash  his 
hands  again.  Then  he  had  refilled  his  tin  basin 
with  what  cool  spring  water  remained  in  his  cedar 
bucket  and  had  plunged  his  face  down  into  this 
and  held  it  there  awhile;  it  felt  fever-hot.  And 
he  had  wet  his  hair  once  more.  He  wet  it  regu 
larly  three  times  a  day  just  before  meals — that 

102 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

thick  yellowish  hair  which,  when  dry  and  espe 
cially  when  he  got  up  of  mornings,  rose  into  the  air 
about  his  head  like  the  beginnings  of  an  aurora 
borealis.  He  wet  it  and  standing  before  the 
cracked  glass  of  his  little  cherry-wood  bureau  tried 
to  brush  it  becomingly  back  from  his  comely  hon 
est-looking  forehead.  All  at  once  he  wondered 
whether  Lucy  Morehead  liked  his  looks.  Within 
the  brief  time  since  the  revolt  against  his  lot  and 
his  quarrel  with  his  mother  he  had  entered  upon 
new  life  toward  Lucy;  at  a  bound  his  nature  had 
attained  maturer  growth  in  the  direction  of  her. 
As  first  evidence  of  this  he  began  to  feel  con 
cerned  about  his  personal  appearance,  a  novel 
kind  of  trouble;  for  every  pair  of  life's  shoes  pinch 
somewhere.  When  you  change  the  shoes,  you 
merely  change  the  pinch — and  often  wish  the 
old  pinch  were  back  again ! 

And  now  he  was  on  his  way  to  her,  not  dusty 
but  wonderfully  fresh  and  clean,  his  coarse  shoes 
blacked,  his  best  calico  shirt — he  had  three  and 
usually  kept  this  one  for  Sundays,  seemingly  as 
though  it  were  the  best  available  decoration  both 

103 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

of  himself  and  of  his  religious  emotions — his  best 
calico  shirt  showing  sentimentally  inside  his  un 
buttoned  jacket.  It  was  secured  in  position  by 
three  little  bluish-white  china  buttons,  which  in 
a  way  appeared  to  have  measured  off  the  space 
occupied  by  his  breastbone  and  to  have  divided 
this  fairly  among  them.  His  jacket  had  been 
freshened  up,  too,  with  a  sprinkling  of  water  and 
a  patient  brushing,  though  well  he  knew  that 
every  time  he  sprinkled  it  he  adapted  its  surface 
the  better  to  collect  dust,  as  though  the  cleaner 
it  were  kept,  the  dustier  it  grew. 

His  eyes  no  longer  had  the  expression  of  being 
sensitively  on  the  watch  for  duties,  for  things  he 
might  have  to  do  or  might  not  have  done ;  instead 
they  held  a  steady,  happy,  careless  fire.  Under 
his  tan  there  glowed  the  deeper  burn  of  boiling 
blood.  Tan  and  freckles  and  boiling  blood  com 
bined  caused  him  to  look  in  the  face  not  unlike  a 
splendidly  ripened  pomegranate.  He  had  ac 
quired  a  new  walk,  his  stride  no  longer  being  that 
of  the  farm-boy  who  drags  a  tired  body  from  task 
to  task.  It  rather  resembled  the  careless,  inde- 

104 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

pendent  saunter  of  a  youth  who  has  just  turned 
soldier  and  already  feels  himself  sharing  the  sol 
dier's  character  and  entitled  to  the  soldier's  ways. 
To  his  brain  had  mounted  two  new  red  wines, 
young  liberty  and  young  strength — lusty  red  wines 
in  any  man's  veins — and  he  was  drunk  with  the 
mixture. 

All  this  meant  that  he  had  torn  himself  desper 
ately  loose  from  everything  that  had  been  slavish 
and  hateful  to  him  in  his  drudgery  on  the  farm. 
He  was  his  own  man,  his  own  master;  he  was 
himself  at  last,  his  long  kept-down  actual  eman 
cipated  self.  And  now  already  he  was  on 
his  way  to  battle-fields  where,  under  the  eyes  of 
the  world,  men  were  heroes.  Already  he  saw  him 
self  a  hero  on  those  fields. 

Another  great  change  unforeseen  by  him  had 
likewise  come  about.  Hitherto  the  farm  had 
been  to  him  an  enemy  which  he  must  conquer  for 
a  living.  It  had  been  something  with  which  he 
had  fought  a  losing  fight.  It  was  a  foe,  an  un 
certainty,  a  disappointment;  it  had  meant  tired 
sleep  and  tired  waking,  flaming  heat  and  benumb- 

105 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

ing  cold.  But  now  that  he  was  to  have  nothing 
more  to  do  with  it,  unless  in  happier  years  to 
come  he  would  ride  over  it  as  its  master,  he  began 
to  see  it  as  something  that  he  was  strongly 
bound  to  and  that  he  loved.  For  the  first  time 
in  his  life  he  could  look  out  upon  the  earth  as  it 
touches  those  who  are  not  compelled  to  wrest 
from  it  their  bread  nor  are  too  much  buffeted 
by  its  storms. 

The  little  path  over  the  fields  with  its  scenery 
had  hitherto  been  to  him  as  a  straight  line  between 
two  houses;  it  had  no  more  called  out  emotions 
under  his  feet  than  would  an  iron  bar  in  his  hands. 
But  now  as  he  walked  slowly  along,  the  meadows 
on  each  side,  the  deep  still  shining  pastures,  the 
old  trees,  the  familiar  fields  in  the  waning  after 
noon  light  and  the  waning  green  of  summer — 
he  passed  them  all  for  the  first  time  aroused  to 
their  reality,  as  giving  plenteously  to  him  their 
established  peace,  their  rooted  strength. 

He  stooped  down  in  a  meadow  and  pulled  a 
red-clover  blossom  and  twirled  it  meditatively  un 
der  his  nose  and  stuck  it  in  the  buttonhole  of  his 

106 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

jacket,  the  first  spontaneous  florescence  of  his 
heart.  Farther  along  he  broke  off  two  little  white 
field-daisies  with  golden  centers, — stars  of  the 
earth's  tenderness, — and  put  them  beside  the 
clover.  Once  ten  yards  away  a  vesper-sparrow 
fluttered  to  a  mullein-stalk  and,  balancing  itself 
there,  sang  for  him  and  he  stopped  and  listened. 
He  came  to  a  brook  which  ran  between  narrow 
green  banks.  A  piece  of  thick  timber,  laid  across 
it,  made  a  bridge.  He  stepped  out  on  this  bridge 
and  stood  looking  down  at  the  brook.  Presently 
he  knelt  and,  reaching  under  the  bridge,  broke  off 
some  sprigs  of  mint  thriving  there  in  the  cool 
moisture ;  and  dabbling  them  in  the  water,  he  stood 
up  and  ate  one.  He  pulled  off  the  heads  of  the 
two  other  stalks  and  tossed  them  in  quiet  succes 
sion  on  the  swift  water.  One  sprig  sat  upright 
and  was  carried  away  like  a  green  cork;  the  other 
fell  over  on  its  side  and  drifted  flat.  He  caught 
sight  of  a  little  whirling  spot  where  the  brook 
flashed  white  as  though  it  broke  into  laughter; 
and  he  pulled  the  clover  out  of  his  buttonhole 
and  with  true  aim  hit  it  squarely,  remembering 

107 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

with  a  smile  how  that  morning  he  had  hit  a  soldier 
in  the  mouth  with  a  peach.  Somehow  he  felt 
kinder  to  that  big,  rude,  gluttonous  teamster  since 
he  was  now  a  soldier  himself  and  would  soon  be 
hungry  for  peaches,  for  bread,  for  everything. 

He  lingered  there  on  the  bridge  over  the  brook 
with  a  kind  of  truant  joy  just  to  be  idle,  not  to 
have  anything  in  the  world  to  do,  but  knowing 
that  in  a  little  while  he  would  be  on  his  way  to 
ward  great  matters.  At  one  time  his  figure  was 
turned  up-stream  to  the  water  as  it  ran  eagerly  to 
him,  then  down-stream  as  it  looked  back  and  sped 
away.  It  laughed  with  him,  it  was  so  young,  so 
fresh,  so  eager,  so  clear  and  clean,  so  happy. 

In  truth,  Joseph  Sumner  had  stepped  from  be 
side  his  old  companion  Care  to  the  side  of  a  new 
companion  Joy.  The  path  between  these  two  is 
so  very  short  in  our  lives!  Yet  he  who 
is  at  either  end  of  that  path  knows  nothing  of  the 
other  end.  Care  cannot  communicate  with  Joy  a 
few  feet  from  it;  Joy  cannot  reach  Care  at  arm's- 
length  away.  Side  by  side  they  move  forward 
through  life,  looking  out  upon  the  same  world  and 

108 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

seeing  different  worlds.  Care  takes  upon  its  back 
the  loneliness  of  distant  mountains,  their  masses, 
their  eternity;  Joy  plays  with  the  white  cascades 
tumbling  down  them  and  enters  the  huts  that 
harbor  human  lives.  Care  considers  the  forest; 
Joy  entertains  itself  with  the  different  trees. 
Care  measures  its  road;  Joy  looks  sidewise  at 
every  pair  of  brilliant  wings  on  any  wayside  blos 
som.  Care  widens  until  itself  is  left  alone  in  the 
universe;  Joy  narrows  until  the  universe  vanishes 
and  itself  survives  with  the  loved  one. 

Thus  the  old  things  of  his  young  life  dropped 
out  and  into  the  voids  rushed  other  things:  a 
flower,  a  bird-song,  a  bridge,  a  brook,  the  evening 
land;  and  plucking  the  flower  with  him,  listen 
ing  to  the  song  with  him,  standing  on  the  bridge 
beside  him,  laughing  at  the  brook  with  him,  cross 
ing  the  evening  land  with  him,  Lucy  Morehead. 

He  had  told  her  to  meet  him  and  he  did  not 
doubt  that  she  waited.  As  he  pictured  their  meet 
ing,  he  took  off  his  hat  and  passed  his  hand  over 
his  hair  to  smooth  it  down  in  place,  wondering 
again  whether  she  really  did  like  his  looks.  His 

109 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

looks  had  now  become  such  a  responsibility  that 
he  trundled  the  weight  of  them  before  him  as 
though  they  made  a  farm  wheelbarrow-load.  He 
pushed  his  thumbs  inside  the  waistband  of  his 
trousers  and  tried  to  draw  down  his  shirt  so  it 
would  not  pucker  on  his  chest.  He  had  long 
been  aware  of  the  existence  of  this  unnecessary 
and  disfiguring  pucker,  but  it  had  never  before 
occasioned  him  chagrin ;  he  had  never  distrusted  it 
as  a  possible  detriment  to  a  lover's  felicity. 
Since  he  was  a  soldier  about  to  say  good-by 
to  his  girl,  he  wished  her  to  remember  him 
as  a  good-looking  soldier,  gallant  and  trim 
though  not  yet  in  his  uniform,  and  with  a  clean, 
sweet,  fresh,  lovable  body  as  he  clasped  her.  He 
was  not  so  sure  that  he  would  clasp  her  but  he 
was  perfectly  sure  that  he  meant  to  try.  He  had 
misgivings  as  to  clasping  her  before  he  told  her 
but  there  seemed  every  likelihood  that  he  would 
clasp  her  afterward.  Young  as  he  was,  he  sur 
mised  that  clasping  depended  upon  what  you  had 
just  had  to  say  for  yourself — with  your  girl. 
The  boundary  line  between  the  two  farms  ran 
no 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

at  nearly  equal  distance  from  the  two  farm 
houses.  A  high  fence  marked  its  course.  The 
land  was  well  covered  with  a  vast  network  of 
these  high  rail-fences  in  those  days  of  the  mid- 
century  bluegrass  farmers. 

In  this  boundary-fence  a  gate  was  swung  wide 
enough  for  the  neighborly  passage  of  threshing- 
machines  and  mowers  and  grain-loaded  wagons. 
The  path  ran  through  the  gate.  On  each  side 
of  the  fence  was  a  bluegrass  pasture,  not  woodland 
pasture,  but  treeless  pasture;  and  on  the  More- 
head  side  of  the  fence,  out  in  the  Morehead  tree 
less  pasture,  there  had  sprung  up  one  of  those 
clumps  of  trees  which  were  then  a  characteristic 
feature  of  the  country.  The  traveler  saw  many 
in  those  days.  Sometimes  one  would  be  situated 
near  a  valley  stream;  sometimes  on  a  hilltop, 
crowning  the  landscape  like  a  woodland  temple 
of  old  classic  lands. 

These  small  wild  groves  on  the  tamed  fields 
were  formed  variously  in  this  wise :  some  autumn 
day  a  squirrel,  living  on  the  edge  of  the  woods 
near  by,  annoyed  perhaps  by  whirling  autumn 

ill 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

winds  which  drove  the  leaves  about  had 
brought  a  nut  out  there  and  buried  it.  His  store 
had  been  plenteous  and  he  had  never  returned. 
In  a  few  years  the  nut  had  become  a  young  tree, 
walnut-tree,  pignut-tree,  hickory-nut.  Then  one 
day  a  passing  bird  alighted  there  as  at  a  way- 
station,  bringing  some  berry  or  leaving  the  seed 
of  one — wild  grape,  wild  cherry,  blackberry. 
In  the  course  of  time  there  were  many  autumn 
days,  many  passing  birds.  Some  brought  seeds 
not  wild,  an  apple-seed,  possibly  even  a  peach- 
seed,  a  strawberry,  a  raspberry — signs  of  the 
near-by  farm  with  its  garden  and  orchard.  One 
autumn  day  a  robin  conveyed  some  little  claret- 
colored  wine  sacks  full  of  pokeroot  wine ;  perhaps 
other  darker  little  wine  sacks  of  elderberry.  The 
winds  also  bore  seed  thither.  And  so  years 
passed  and  the  grove  grew  until  it  became  some 
sort  of  epitome  of  primitive  nature  and  of  culti 
vated  nature  thereabouts.  Made  by  animal  and 
bird  and  winds — winds,  the  unseen  almoners 
of  desert  places.  All  these  had  worked  together 
with  no  knowledge  of  one  another  and  with  no 

112 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

purpose  to  achieve  a  common  result;  and  there 
at  last  the  grove  stood,  a  pastoral  witchery 
of  shade  and  greenness  and  coolness,  of  odors  and 
berries  and  nuts  and  fruit.  Topping  it  at  the 
center,  some  forest  tree;  entwined  about  this  the 
wild  grape.  Lower  down  a  fruit-tree;  still  lower 
a  bramble;  still  lower  wild  flowers — dandelions, 
violets.  Lowest  of  all,  grass.  All  brought  to 
gether  by  instincts  and  forces  acting  blindly  of 
one  another,  a  sylvan  masterpiece  created  for  no 
end. 

The  land  was  high  there.  It  sloped  westwardly 
toward  the  Morehead  place  and  eastwardly  to 
ward  the  Sumner  place.  From  the  summit  as  a 
lookout  it  was  easy  to  see  much  of  what  went  on 
in  the  yard  or  in  the  lots  of  either  homestead. 

Toward  this  grove  Joseph  Sumner  was  now  on 
his  upward  way :  it  was  their  meeting-place.  She 
would  be  waiting.  He  hoped  he  looked  his  best. 
But  he  doubted  it! 


CHAPTER  X 

ON  the  eastern  side  Lucy  Morehead  sat  and 
waited,  watching  the  long  gradual  ascent 
which  he  must  climb.  She  had  spread  on  the 
grass  her  shawl  of  blue  zephyr,  which  she  herself 
had  knitted,  and  she  was  sitting  on  this,  white- 
frocked  still,  a  blue  ribbon  at  her  cool  throat,  a 
blue  ribbon  about  her  warm  waist,  blue  ribbons 
laced  about  her  ankles,  her  long  chestnut  plaits 
knotted  with  blue  ribbons.  In  the  evening  light, 
under  the  soft  clear  sky  brushed  by  the  low  rays 
of  the  sun,  on  the  lap  of  that  verdure,  against  the 
background  of  vines  and  boughs,  she  waited — 
waited  like  some  unharmed  Marguerite  at  sun 
down  on  the  Elysian  Fields. 

Across  the  crystal  stillnesses  of  air  there  reached 
her  on  her  side  of  the  fence,  though  she  paid  no  at 
tention  to  them,  the  distant  evening  noises  of  farm 
life.  From  over  the  fence  on  the  Sumner  side 

114 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

there  came  not  a  sound  of  fowl  or  beast  or  human 
being  to  betoken  the  day's  profitable  and  peaceful 
close.  Over  there  the  hatreds  of  war  reigned 
amid  the  desolation  they  had  created.  Those 
hatreds,  this  desolation,  furnished  the  ground 
of  Lucy  Morehead's  disapproval  of  Mrs. 
Sumner.  There  was  small  capacity  in  her  na 
ture  for  hatred  of  any  one,  and  her  brain 
of  seventeen  summers  and  of  no  worldly  ex 
perience  was  innocent  of  worldly  wisdom.  She 
was  filled  with  things  much  nearer  heaven  than 
worldly  wisdom  ever  gets  to  be.  But  she  had 
gifts  of  her  own, — a  marvelously  clear  straight 
eye  for  invaluable  ordinary  things,  a  quite  mar 
velous  simplicity  of  good  sense,  fairness  of  judg 
ment;  and  out  of  these  she  condemned  old  quar 
rels  that  burdened  a  young  life.  It  had  become 
the  demand,  the  requirement,  of  her  whole  nature 
that  Joseph  Summer's  mother  should  become  recon 
ciled  to  her  brother-in-law  for  the  sake  of  her  own 
son. 

She  sat  wondering  whether  the  grave  things  he 
was  going  to  tell  her  concerned  the  family  feud. 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

At  least  she  foresaw  that  they  concerned  her — 
her  and  him,  the  present,  the  future;  this  was 
implied  in  his  confidential  and  stern  manner. 

When  through  the  fence  she  saw  him  coming, 
she  rose  and  started  toward  him  with  her  quiet 
steps,  with  the  sereneness  of  her  trust. 

He  did  not  as  always  open  the  big  field-gate 
barely  wide  enough  for  the  passage  of  his  body 
and  then  quietly  close  it  behind  him ;  but  he  flung 
it  wide  open  as  for  a  loaded  wagon,  and  he  walked 
through  the  middle  space  as  though  he  were  that 
harvest-freighted  vehicle.  And  he  allowed  the 
heavy  gate  carelessly  to  slam  behind  him  with  the 
whole  shock  of  its  weight.  Then  he  tossed  his 
old  harvest-frayed  hat  edgewise  up  into  the  air, 
and  as  it  descended  he  caught  it  on  his  arm, 
and  advanced  toward  her,  careless,  easy,  free, 
with  a  broad  smile.  Nature  interposed  no  struc 
tural  obstacle  in  his  case  to  a  broad  smile ;  all  that 
was  required  was  some  outside  happening  which 
would  warrant  him  in  making  use  of  her  ample 
arrangement. 

His  unusual  behavior  and  demeanor  had  not  es- 
116 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

caped  her  attention,  nor  had  the  daisies  in  his  but 
tonhole.  It  was  the  first  time  she  had  ever  seen 
flowers  on  his  jacket.  She  knew  the  jacket  per 
fectly  well,  every  seam  of  it  and  crease  and  chronic 
dust-spot;  but  the  flowers  struck  her  as  the  first 
revolt  of  its  humdrum  existence.  Its  daisies 
seemed  to  consort  with  her  rose.  His  flowers  and 
her  flowers,  as  soon  as  they  discovered  each  other 
began  to  exchange  little  responsive  signals;  began 
to  say  for  the  wearers  of  them  what  the  wearers 
themselves  had  not  yet  said.  The  effect  upon 
her  was  that  she  did  not  walk  farther  toward 
him  but  stopped  and  waited.  He  came  up  with 
out  a  word  as  though  his  mere  expression  ought 
to  suffice,  as  though  the  mere  look  of  him  would 
explain.  And  indeed,  upon  close  inspection,  the 
look  was  so  beyond  her  experience  of  him  that 
involuntarily  she  exclaimed: 

"Why,  Joe,  what  have  you  been  doing  to  your 
self4?  You  look  almost — handsome!" 

At  this  unexpected  reassurance,  which  dropped 
from  heaven  as  an  answer  to  hard  wayside  pray 
ing,  he  was  of  a  mind  to  pass  beyond  the  doubt- 

117 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

ful  frontier  of  looks  and  enter  what  seemed  to 
him  to  be  his  own  conquered  country. 

''Then  kiss  me!"  he  cried,  and  he  tried  to  throw 
his  arms  about  her.  Almost  he  succeeded,  for  she 
was  not  expecting  the  unexpected,  not  believing 
the  incredible.  She  eluded  him  and  softly  fled 
from  him  and  he  pursued  her  over  the  grass. 
Once  she  called  back  to  him  with  her  tranquil 
laughter: 

"You  must  have  found  out  the  name  of  the 
cake.  I  am  afraid  you  have  eaten  it.  I  am  so 
afraid  you  have  eaten  too  much." 

He  reached  for  her  quickly  and  caught  hold 
of  one  of  her  long  plaits.  She  bent  over  far 
away  from  him: 

"Don't,  Joe,"  she  said,  "or  I  won't  like  it,"  and 
she  gave  him  to  understand  that  he  had  already 
taken  possession  of  all  the  territory  he  had  as  yet 
acquired.  He  released  her  and  she  turned  to 
ward  him,  tossing  the  long  plaits  back  into  their 
places  with  soft  sliding  movements  of  her  finger 
tips  over  her  ears.  Then  she  began  to  study 
his  flowering  buttonhole  and  his  best  shirt  and 

118 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

his  face  again  with  amused  bewilderment  at  his 
riot  of  happiness. 

"It 's  all  settled,  Lucy !"  he  exclaimed,  eager 
to  communicate  his  fate.  "I  am  going!" 

"Where  are  you  going?"  she  inquired  indiffer 
ently,  feeling  sure  that  he  could  not  be  going  any 
where  very  far  off. 

"To  join  the  army.  I  am  going  at  daybreak  in 
the  morning.  I  have  come  to  tell  you  good-by." 

The  announcement  broke  upon  her  without 
warning.  And  life's  deep  warm  current  seemed 
to  stop.  She  stood  white-frozen  and  mute.  And 
instantly  her  heart  cried  out  against  destiny: 

"No!  no!  no!" 

He  laughed  at  her  distress : 

"Yes!  yes!  yes!" 

Her  swift  thought  instinctively  raised  the  first 
great  obstacle: 

"Have  you  told  your  mother'?" 

"I  have  told  my  mother." 

He  answered  in  a  manner  to  close  that  part  of 
the  subject;  it  could  not  be  discussed.  But  she 
questioned  him  all  the  more  with  alarmed  and  re- 

119 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

buking  eyes.  She  must  speak  out  as  one  woman 
for  any  other  woman  thus  deserted: 

"How  can  you  go*?     How  can  you  leave — " 

He  laughed  triumphantly: 

"I  can  go  easily  enough.  I  can  leave  every 
thing." 

Her  eyes  doubly  rebuked  him  next  that  he 
could  leave  two  women. 

"And  you  can  be  happy  to  go?" 

"I  am  happy  to  go.  It  is  easy  to  be  happy  if 
you  get  the  chance !" 

Other  thoughts  swarmed  in  her : 

"When  did  you  first  think  of  going?" 

He  answered  with  amused  quiet  determina 
tion: 

"The  night  my  father  and  my  brothers  went. 
I  have  thought  of  it  every  day  since,  every  night 
since  then." 

She  resented  his  having  kept  his  secret : 

"And  you  have  never  told  me,  Joe." 

"I  have  never  told  you,"  he  replied,  proud 
that  he  had  kept  his  secret.  This  wounded  her 
and  he  saw  the  wound. 

120 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

"Why  should  I  have  told  you  I  wanted  to  go? 
As  soon  as  I  knew  I  was  going  I  told  you."  Then 
he  added,  as  though  his  mind  and  life  were  rusty 
with  experience:  "A  soldier  does  not  talk — even 
to  women." 

Her  hurrying  thoughts  traveled  toward  her 
brother. 

"O  Joe,  you  will  see  Tom,  you  will  be  with. 
Tom!" 

He  shook  his  head. 

"I  don't  think  so;  it  would  take  me  too  long  to 
reach  that  part  of  the  army." 

He  pointed  up  the  hillside  to  where  her  shawl 
was  spread  and  started  toward  it: 

"I  '11  tell  you  all  about  it." 

She  sat  down,  glad  to  do  so,  because  she  had  no 
strength  to  stand;  he  threw  himself  on  the  grass 
beside  her.  Another  practical  thought  had  made 
its  way  to  her  practical  mind: 

"How  can  you  go  anywhere  without  money'?" 

He  studied  her  face  with  amused  superiority. 
He  had  a  chance  to  reveal  another  secret ! 

"You  see  this  hat?"  he  asked,  shaking  his  old 
121 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

harvest  hat  at  arm's-length.  "You  remember  I 
worked  in  the  harvest  summer  before  last?  And 
last  summer'?  And  that  I  have  been  working  this 
summer?  Those  were  my  holidays,  my  days. 
All  that  money  was  mine,  my  negro  money.  That 
will  take  me,  more  than  take  me,  take  me  farther 
than  I  need  to  go.  Of  course  I  won't  need  any 
clothes  when  I  'm  once  through  the  lines.  I  '11 
have  my  uniform." 

The  picture  glowed  before  her  at  once :  she  was 
proudly  seeing  him  in  his  uniform. 

"My  plan  is,"  he  said,  pressing  on — "my  plan 
is  to  go  straight  to  Virginia,  to  General  Lee's  army. 
That  is  the  quickest  way  to  get  through  the  lines 
and  that  is  where  I  want  to  be.  The  Govern 
ment  railroad  runs  almost  to  Richmond.  Lin 
coln  is  determined  to  capture  Richmond.  Grant 
is  the  man  he  has  picked  to  take  Richmond.  I  'm 
going  straight  there  because  I  '11  be  in  the  thick 
of  it;  from  this  time  on  all  the  hard  fighting  is 
going  to  be  there.  I  won't  be  with  Tom." 

So  he  was  going  after  Grant,  after  all ! 

She  had  ceased  to  ask  questions ;  she  merely  lis- 
122 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

tened  to  the  marvel  of  'him  as  his  plans  were 
unfolded  more  and  more.  He  went  into  an  analy 
sis  of  the  whole  military  situation.  He  knew 
where  the  different  armies  were,  what  armies  were 
opposing  what  armies,  what  generals  were  man 
euvering  against  what  generals.  His  brain  was 
one  military  map  of  all  the  campaigns  as  far  as 
these  were  known  to  the  newspapers.  The  little 
prodigy  of  memory  he  once  had  been  he  was  still. 
While  she  listened,  a  great  change  came  over  her: 
the  almost  maternal  sympathy  she  had  always 
felt  for  him  disappeared;  for  the  first  time  she 
confronted  the  hero,  and  she  bowed  down  to 
him. 

"And  now,  Lucy,"  he  said  as  though  coming  to 
things  nearer  home,  "one  thing  you  are  to  do  for 
me.  I  leave  my  mother  in  your  care.  She  will 
need  you." 

She  looked  quickly  away. 

"Promise,"  he  urged. 

She  still  looked  away. 

"No;"  he  insisted,  understanding  her  reluc 
tance,  "you  must  promise ;  you  are  to  take  care  of 

123 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

my  mother.  And  I  have  told  her  that  she  must 
let  my  uncle  come." 

She  suddenly  looked  him  in  the  eyes  with 
warning. 

"She  will  never  let  him  come.  She  will  be  left 
alone." 

"Then  she  will  have  you.  Promise,  forget,  for 
give." 

She  remained  silent.  Then  the  first  tears 
dimmed  her  eyes.  She  yielded  to  him  to  her  own 
hurt. 

"I  will  do  what  I  can." 

"If  you  can  ever  send  me  a  letter,"  he  said, 
continuing  to  work  out  his  plans,  "you  are  to  tell 
me  the  truth  about  everything  at  home.  I  shall 
want  to  know  what  happens  to-morrow  and  the 
next  day.  And  if  you  must  send  me  such  a  let 
ter,  if  you  ever  have  to  write  to  me,  go  to  my 
uncle.  He  has  influence  at  headquarters  and 
will  get  the  letter  through  the  lines.  If  you  ever 
write,  tell  me  the  truth  about  my  mother." 

The  minutes  had  slipped  by  unwatched.  The 
sun  had  gone  down,  the  shadows  of  the  earth  grew 

124 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

darker  about  them.  Remembrance  of  how  late 
it  was  startled  her  at  last,  and  she  looked  at  him 
with  a  long  quivering  breath  of  pain. 

"I  must  go,"  she  said,  "but  I  can't  tell  you 
good-by." 

He  lay  on  the  grass  beside  her,  propped  on  his 
elbow,  his  cheek  in  his  palm;  he  looked  up  at  her 
with  no  pain  in  his  eyes.  Not  even  parting  could 
extinguish  his  joy;  happiness  ran  through  him  like 
light. 

He  patted  the  grass  beside  him. 

"Put  )^our  head  down  here  beside  mine,"  he 
said  softly.  "This  is  going  to  be  my  pillow. 
Every  night  as  I  lay  my  head  on  it,  I  will  remem 
ber  that  yours  was  once  beside  mine,  on  the  same 
pillow — on  my  pillow.  It  will  be  there  every 
night.  Lie  down  here  beside  me,  Lucy." 

When  there  is  but  little  time  in  which  to  yield, 
one  yields  so  easily,  so  much;  she  lay  down  beside 
him,  trembling,  and  with  a  faintness  in  her 
brain. 

He  sat  up  and  bent  over  her.  He  slipped  one 
hand  under  her  head  and  let  it  rest  in  his  palm 

125 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

and  he  put  his  other  arm  around  her  and  bent 
his  face  low  over  her  face. 

"Remember,"  he  said,  "that  where  your  head  is 
will  be  my  pillow.  Every  night  as  I  put  my  head 
there,  I  '11  remember  that  yours  was  beside  mine 
once,  on  the  same  pillow — on  my  pillow.  It  will 
be  there  every  night.  I  must  kiss  you.  You 
must  kiss  me.  We  must  kiss  each  other." 

Her  lips  parted;  a  quiver  passed  over  them — a 
little  quiver  of  the  lips,  their  delirium,  their  bliss, 
life's  consecration,  life's  torture. 

He  whispered  over  her  closed  eyes: 

"Till  I  come.  Or — or — for  whatever  happens 
to  me,  Lucy." 


126 


CHAPTER  XI 

JOSEPH  SUMNER  was  on  his  way  home. 
He  walked  along  slowly,  wishing  he  were 
not  obliged  to  go  at  all.  Never  again  to  that 
house  where  he  had  been  born  and  had  tried  to 
do  his  duty  and  where  there  were  poor  thoughts 
of  him.  He  would  have  started  for  the  war 
that  moment  if  he  had  remembered  to  bring  away 
his  small  secret  hoard  of  money.  For  this  he 
must  return  but  he  would  not  go  to  bed.  Dur 
ing  the  night  he  would  leave  the  house,  sleep 
somewhere  outdoors,  and  at  daybreak  be  off  to 
town  for  the  earliest  train  that  would  hurry  him 
toward  the  battle  lines.  He  was  enamored  of 
that  idea  of  throwing  himself  down  anywhere  on 
the  ground  to  snatch  a  few  hours'  sleep  and  of 
starting  off  without  any  breakfast:  very  soon  he 
would  grow  used,  grow  hardened,  to  all  that. 
Rebellious  farm  boy  emancipated  from  the 
127 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

slavery  of  the  farm,  young  soldier,  accepted 
lover,  he  started  slowly  homeward  through  the 
twilight  along  the  little  field-path  of  memories. 

The  sun  by  now  was  well  below  the  horizon, 
leaving  a  few  clouds  gathered  outside  the  closed 
gates  of  the  day  like  disappointed  sheep,  forbid 
den  to  follow  any  farther  the  shepherd  of  their 
ancient  road.  Elsewhere  the  evening  sky  spread 
clear  and  tranquil,  and  under  it  the  whole  land 
scape  lay  in  a  startlingly  vivid  light. 

Nothing  now  had  a  shadow.  Nothing  had  a 
brighter  and  a  darker  side.  Trees  and  fences  to 
the  right  and  to  the  left  of  him,  each  nearer  bush 
and  weed,  the  plump  gay  clovertops,  the  decrepit 
stumps,  the  tangled  mangled  blades  of  grass  fall 
ing  across  the  path — all  were  revealed  in  the 
same  light;  all  were  touched  with  the  justice,  the 
impartiality,  of  a  balanced  light.  And  nothing 
stirred  in  the  air,  there  was  no  air.  There  was 
no  west  nor  east,  no  south  or  north,  for  the 
winds;  no  points  of  the  compass  for  the  absent 
winds.  There  was  only  the  earth's  atmosphere 
as  one  deep  mirror  of  vision  and  in  that  mirror 

128 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

Nature,  reflected  as  living  but  powerless  to  move. 
It  was  as  though  Time,  the  disturber,  had  quit 
the  scene,  leaving  only  Time,  the  master  of 
stillness. 

As  he  went  forward  more  reluctantly,  he  began 
to  take  a  last  look  at  things  familiar  to  him  all 
his  life.  Seen  thus  in  the  evening  stillness,  they 
could  but  fix  themselves  in  his  mind  as  perma 
nent,  could  but  remind  him  that  they  would  re 
main  much  as  he  left  them  though  he  were  years 
in  coming  back,  would  remain  thus  though  he 
never  came.  He  grew  acquainted  for  the  first 
time  with  one  of  life's  deepest  experiences:  the 
pathos  of  going  toward  great  changes,  leaving  the 
things  he  loved  unchanged:  we  realize  that  we 
count  for  so  little  on  the  general  scene. 

In  truth  quite  suddenly  the  farm,  his  farm 
some  day  if  he  lived,  quite  suddenly  the  very 
ground  under  his  feet  began  to  speak  to  him,  to 
reason  with  him  as  though  he  needed  to  be  rea 
soned  with  and  had  no  one  else.  It  began  to 
say  that  the  winds  pass;  that  the  worst  storm  is 
soon  over  and  counts  for  little  in  the  long  run; 

129 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

that  the  thunder  does  not  crash  for  a  year  at  a 
time  nor  a  flash  of  lightning  burn  for  a  continu 
ous  week.  The  nation's  war  was  but  a  tempest 
in  its  history,  not  the  great  quiet  peace-loving 
nation  itself.  It  went  on  to  say  that  whatever 
wanders  is  worthless;  only  what  stands  still 
grows  to  full  size;  only  what  is  rooted  in  its 
place  ever  ripens.  The  wheat  accepts  its  lot, 
whatever  that  lot  may  be,  and  through  such  ac 
ceptance  whether  of  frost  or  fire  comes  to  its 
patient  gold.  The  inanimate  inarticulate  things 
he  had  toiled  with,  the  poor  mute  things  he  de 
spised  and  was  glad  to  be  rid  of,  offered  him 
their  experience,  their  lessons,  their  wisdom.  The 
clods  became  his  philosopher. 

He  went  forward  so  slowly  now  that  two  or 
three  times  he  was  about  to  turn  out  of  the  path 
and  sit  down  in  the  fields,  through  lack  of  reso 
lution  to  sustain  him  longer.  Sometimes  on 
those  fields  at  winter  twilights  in  those  years 
a  huge  bonfire  could  often  be  noticed  from  a  dis 
tance.  It  was  the  burning  of  the  gray  heaps  of 
hemp  shards  to  which  clung  filaments  of  inflam- 

130 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

mable  tow.  For  a  few  minutes  there  would  be 
a  red  roaring  flame;  and  then  the  bare  ground 
again  still  holding  its  winter  cold,  and  on  it  a 
thin  covering  of  fresh  ashes  like  scant  flakes  of 
snow.  Through  the  ashes  you  could  see  the 
earth's  old  wounds  made  at  seed  time :  the  furrow 
of  the  March  plow,  the  tooth  of  the  April  har 
row,  the  hoof  prints  of  the  horse  which  had  car 
ried  the  sower  back  and  forth.  Brief  flames,  thin 
ashes,  old  uneradicated  scars. 

The  counterpart  of  that  scene  of  the  Kentucky 
hemp  fields  was  taking  place  in  the  Kentucky 
boy.  His  fire  had  died  out,  his  boiling  blood 
had  cooled,  in  his  brain  there  was  no  longer  the 
mixture  of  the  new  red  wines  of  young  liberty 
and  young  strength.  His  fire  was  out,  its  ashes 
were  left,  and  under  the  ashes  were  the  deep 
ruts  of  the  years  and  the  old  wounds  of  slavish 
things.  Insensibly  even  his  walk  had  changed 
back  into  the  listless  gait  of  the  farmhand,  going 
home  to  his  bed  after  his  barren  day  with  the 
mold. 

For  not  in  an  afternoon,  not  in  a  quarrel,  can 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

we  empty  our  lives  of  the  things  that  have  long 
filled  them  and  ruled  them.  Cast  these  out  as 
we  may,  they  will  rush  back;  time  and  again 
they  will  rush  back.  The  ox  which  has  been 
broken  to  the  yoke  will,  after  the  yoke  is  lifted 
from  its  neck,  continue  to  swing  its  head  low  as 
when  the  yoke  is  worn.  Turned  out  to  graze,  it 
will  cross  a  wide  meadow  and  place  itself  flank 
to  flank  beside  its  fellow  ox  as  though  they  drew 
their  load.  And  many  a  time  our  past  lives 
when  about  to  be  discarded,  whether  our  selfish 
lives  for  the  sake  of  ourselves  or  our  generous 
lives  for  the  sake  of  others — many  a  time  these 
pasts  of  ours,  if  they  can  but  give  themselves  the 
names  of  duties,  will  fight  to  regain  their  control 
of  us.  We  may  know  them  for  what  they  are 
and  resolve  to  end  them  for  our  good;  but  wrap 
ping  their  dark  bodies  in  white  robes  they  will 
often  succeed  in  reconquering  us  as  abandoned 
virtues;  they  reenter  us  as  our  indwelling  angels 
whom  we  had  deeply  wronged. 

The  whole  of  Joseph  Sumner's  boyhood  on  the 
farm  with  its  habits  and  responsibilities  met  him 

132 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

there  in  the  twilight  path  as  he  was  on  his  way 
to  the  house  with  the  idea  of  going  away.  The 
whole  group  met  him  and  sought  to  dissuade  him. 
All  reproached  him  with  one  word — duty;  all 
called  him  one  thing — a  deserter  of  his  sacred 
post,  his  only  post  in  life.  By  everything  that 
was  good  in  him  they  swore  he  must  not  go. 

His  head  dropped  heavily  forward,  and  after 
keeping  on  a  little  further,  he  turned  out  of  the 
path  as  one  who  no  longer  has  a  path  and  sat 
down  in  the  fields  amid  the  shadows  of  the  earth. 

And  now  with  his  first  yielding,  everything 
that  had  reproached  him  instantly  crowded  about 
him  and  reproached  him  more  clamorously:  at 
once  he  paid  the  forfeit  of  beginning  to  yield; 
for  upon  the  discovery  of  his  weak  point  every 
thing  freshly  attacked  him  there. 

The  farm  again  sternly  reproached  him  with 
out  words:  he  was  abandoning  his  land.  Not 
far  away  now  must  lie  for  the  nation  its  long  un 
breakable  peace:  he  would  be  more  needed  dur 
ing  those  years — more  needed  for  the  long  peace 
than  for  a  brief  war.  By  rushing  into  the  latter 

133 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

he  might  by  his  death  efface  among  the  living 
the  line  of  his  fathers.  That  reproach  was  laid 
on  him  as  an  intolerable  weight — those  years  of 
peace  and  the  farm  in  the  possession  of  strangers. 

His  mother  reproached  him  with  more  than 
words.  From  where  he  sat  he  could  see  through 
the  trees  in  the  yard  the  corner  of  the  house  where 
her  bedroom  was.  At  this  hour,  often  returning 
from  the  fields,  he  would  watch  for  her  lighted 
candle.  To-night  there  was  none.  For  the  first 
time  in  his  life  his  mother  had  not  lighted  her 
candle:  she  sat  there  in  her  darkness  because  he 
had  deserted  her. 

And  Lucy  Morehead!  Her  first  instinctive 
question  had  been:  "How  can  you  go"?"  That 
fundamental  judgment  of  hers  condemned  him. 
In  the  hurry  of  their  parting  her  mind  had  been 
engrossed  by  other  things ;  but  he  said  that  in  time 
she  would  come  back  to  that  low  mean  thought 
of  him  and  remember  him  only  as  having  run 
away  from  his  duty  at  home.  And  that  convic 
tion  of  his  not  being  true  to  the  core  would  wear 
out  her  love:  she  would  never  marry  him. 

134 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

And  his  father  and  his  brothers !  He  had  told 
his  mother  that  his  father's  spirit  called  to  him 
to  quit  the  farm  and  come  to  battle;  still  he  was 
not  positive.  Now  it  seemed  to  him  that  his 
father  and  his  brothers  lifted  themselves  out  of 
their  soldier  graves  and  looked  at  him  sorrowr 
fully  for  being  false  to  his  last  promise,  that  he 
would  stand  by  his  mother.  They  awoke  out  of 
their  martial  sleep  to  rebuke  him,  then  lay  down 
again  in  their  martial  sleep. 

But  what  if  he  went  to  bed  as  usual  and  in  the 
morning  as  usual  started  about  his  work?  What 
would  his  mother  think  of  him  then?  That  he 
had  backed  down  after  a  little  brag  and  a  little 
bluster:  a  timorous  little  whitefeather — the  nub 
bin.  How  could  he  live  with  her  any  longer 
even  if  he  did  not  go?  He  saw  one  ruin  there. 
And  suppose  the  next  day  he  went  to  see  Lucy 
Morehead  and  as  she,  amazed,  came  to  meet  him, 
he  were  to  greet  her  with  the  words:  "I  have 
given  it  up,  Lucy.  I  am  not  going."  He  durst 
not  picture  how  her  love  would  begin  to  die,  even 
as  she  shrank  from  him.  He  beheld  another 

135 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

ruin  there.  And  after  all  he  was  not  so  sure 
either  that  as  long  as  he  lived,  whenever  he 
thought  of  his  father  and  his  brothers,  he  would 
not  see  them  looking  at  him  with  reproach  that 
he  had  shirked  fight  and  kept  far  from  the  great 
fields. 

Thus  outspread  before  him  was  the  whole 
tumultuous  disordered  field  of  duty.  But  what 
was  duty*?  It  was  right  to  go,  it  was  wrong  to 
go.  It  was  right  to  stay,  it  was  wrong  to  stay. 
He  could  not  be  true  without  being  false,  faith 
ful  without  being  faithless,  loyal  unless  he  de 
serted — something,  somebody. 

And  thus  in  a  way  the  boy,  alone  there  on 
his  father's  farm  in  the  darkness  of  that  Septem 
ber  evening  long  years  ago — in  his  way  he  was 
all  of  us.  The  nation  writhed  in  the  death- 
throes  of  a  great  sad  war;  but  within  him  was  a 
greater  war  still.  It  is  the  war  we  all  wage  be 
tween  what  is  right  within  us  and  what  is  right; 
between  one  duty  and  another  duty;  between 
what  is  good  and  what  is  good.  Not  war  be 
tween  our  strength  and  our  weakness  but  between 

136 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

our  strength  and  our  strength,  between  our  peace 
and  our  peace.  When  we  triumphantly  fight  the 
evil  within  us  with  the  good  within  us,  we  have 
our  victory  for  our  reward;  but  whenever  we  de 
stroy  one  glorious  virtue  with  another  glorious 
virtue,  our  triumph  can  only  be  our  loss.  For  we 
have  driven  from  the  battlefield  of  the  mind  a 
vital  force  which  yesterday  we  may  have  relied 
upon  to  win  life  with;  and  to-morrow  we  may 
fail  to  win  life  again  because  we  have  defeated 
that  force  to-day.  In  the  victorious  war  of  good 
over  evil  we  reap  at  least  the  approval  of  con 
science;  but  in  the  warfare  of  our  good  upon  our 
good  we  can  only  achieve  the  partial  destruction 
of  ourselves:  we  have  become  the  conquerors  of 
our  best. 

This  was  the  boy's  war  out  there  on  the  fields 
amid  the  dark  shadows  of  the  ground  and  amid 
the  white  shadows  of  his  spirit. 

It  was  almost  dark  now.  Night  seemed  to 
have  settled  finally  down.  Then  he  became 
aware  that  objects  before  him  began  to  grow  more 
distinct.  The  shapes  of  the  trees  returned,  the 

137 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

stumps  reappeared,  the  path  nearby  once  more 
took  its  way  visibly  down  the  slope;  all  because 
light  had  begun  to  stream  from  behind  him  across 
the  landscape.  This  was  the  radiance  of  the  sun 
long  since  set,  the  afterglow  of  summer  evenings 
when  far-bent  rays  suddenly  shoot  up  from  be 
neath  the  horizon  and  begin  to  brush  the  clouds. 
The  sun  goes  down,  the  west  grows  dark;  then 
all  at  once  light  begins  to  return — the  afterglow. 

He  turned  round  and  sat  absently  watching 
that  light  from  the  hidden  sun.  It  rose  higher, 
spread  more  broadly.  It  reached  the  clouds  and 
began  to  pass  from  one  to  another  until  it 
brought  out  the  shapes  of  the  whole  group  of 
them — still  balancing  themselves  there  above  the 
path  of  the  sunken  orb. 

In  old  eastern  lands  the  earliest  poet  of  nature 
whose  words  have  come  down  to  us  in  the 
poem  of  Job,  as  he  looked  out  upon  the  uni 
verse  and  made  his  reverent  study  of  it,  observed 
those  same  balanced  clouds.  It  seems  to  have 
filled  him  with  wonderment  that  they  could  so 
arrange  themselves  about  the  sun — those  great 

138 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

shapes  crossing  the  sky:  vast  bulks  that  never 
fell,  never  toppled  over  however  top-heavy,  never 
upset  howsoever  they  might  lean:  pinnacles  built 
on  nothing,  towers  without  foundations,  moun 
tains  with  no  rocks  to  rest  on.  And  so  it  all  be 
came  to  him  one  of  the  uncomprehended  secrets 
of  the  power  of  God :  "Dost  thou  know  the  bal 
ancings  of  the  clouds?" 

In  the  mind  of  the  boy  there  was  also  a  sun, 
one  moral  sun  forever  crossing  its  sky — his  con 
science.  And  as  the  sun  in  nature  creates  the 
clouds  of  the  earth,  so  the  moral  sun  within  him 
created  the  clouds  of  his  life,  his  duties.  With 
out  the  sun  in  nature  no  mists ;  without  conscience 
in  him  no  obligations.  But  while  he  could  see 
the  sun — both  the  sun  and  its  clouds — never  could 
he  see  his  conscience:  he  could  see  only  its  at 
tendant  shapes,  his  duties. 

And  now  he  sat  there  and  watched,  far  away 
in  the  west,  the  clouds  poised  around  the  invis 
ible  sun;  and  tried  to  consider  his  duties,  poised 
around  his  hidden  conscience. 

Meantime  nature,  unmindful  of  him,  went  on 
139 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

with  her  everyday  work.  She  proceeded  further 
to  paint  the  scene.  Slowly  with  her  vast  brush 
she  brought  back  the  faint  blue  of  the  sky.  On 
this  field  of  faint  blue  she  began  to  sketch  long 
bars  of  red — barred  clouds  of  faint  low  red. 
Then  here  and  there  over  the  field  of  blue,  amidst 
the  bars  of  red,  she  scattered  a  few  white  stars. 
Blue  field,  red  bars,  white  stars. 

The  boy  looked  on  with  his  soul  in  his  troubled 
eyes.  It  was  no  miracle  wrought  out  for  him, 
no  portent,  no  uncommon  sight.  Many  a  time 
he  had  seen  the  equivalent  before;  but  now  for 
the  first  time  he  thought  of  it  differently.  It  sug 
gested  to  him  the  colors  of  his  battle  flag — the 
battle  flag  of  the  soldier  of  the  South :  blue  field, 
red  bars,  white  stars.  And  so  those  ordinary 
colors  of  the  sky  became  to  him  a  reminder  of 
battlefields  far  away  where  a  great  cause  was 
dying  out  in  the  world  not  for  lack  of  manhood 
but  for  lack  of  men,  for  lack  of  boys.  It 
seemed  to  him  that  he  could  almost  see  a  battle- 
spent  youth  whom  he  did  not  know,  turning  a 
mute  look  toward  him  as  if  he  would  murmur: 

140 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

"Come  and  strike  hands  and  fight  on !  Take  my 
sword!" 

As  quickly  as  the  scene  on  the  sky  had  been 
brushed  in,  it  was  brushed  out:  the  red  bars 
faded,  the  blue  field  was  no  more,  the  stars  that 
were  left  were  not  the  sinking  stars  of  a  flag 
but  the  constant  ones  of  eternity. 

And  now  he  sat  alone  with  darkness  all  round 
him  far  and  near,  looking  at  only  one  light:  that 
strange  marvelous  light  of  his  conscience  within 
him — that  unseen  sun — around  which  were 
grouped  his  balanced  duties. 


141 


THE 
SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

PART  SECOND 


CHAPTER  I 

IT  was  a  fresh  cool  morning  in  the  wild  rough 
shaggy  country  of  northern  Virginia  toward 
the  last  of  March  1865  nearly  two  years  later; 
and  at  a  strategically  chosen  spot  along  the  edge 
of  a  thick  wood  was  encamped  a  detachment  of 
the  Army  of  Northern  Virginia,  the  harassed  un- 
conquered  Army  of  Northern  Virginia.  That 
land  once  gave  its  name  to  that  army  but  for  all 
time  the  army  has  given  its  name  to  the  land. 
Its  last  lost  battles  live  in  the  red  flash  of  the 
storm,  in  the  crash  and  boom  of  thunder,  in  the 
slow  sobbing  valley  rains  and  on  the  white  es 
cutcheon  of  the  snows. 

About  ten  o'clock,  strolling  along  an  edge  of 
the  camp,  passed  two  young  soldiers,  Joseph  Sum- 
ner  and  his  tent-mate,  battle-mate,  death-mate; 
his  close  human  brother  at  night  with  one  oil 
cloth  to  sleep  on  or  no  oil-cloth ;  with  two  blankets 

H5 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

to  cover  with  or  one  blanket  or  no  blanket.  This 
comrade  was  a  heavy  stalwart  young  South  Caro 
lina-Virginian,  a  few  years  older  than  himself, 
whom  as  they  affectionately  sauntered  the  Ken 
tucky  youth  called  "Fairfax." 

Nearly  two  years  of  military  service,  of  march 
ing,  camping,  entrenching,  foraging,  defending,  at 
tacking,  retreating,  starving,  thirsting,  freezing, 
but  always  fighting,  had  set  their  mark  on  the 
Kentucky  farm-boy.  He  had  broadened  and  he 
had  grown.  He  had  shot  up  late  toward  his  full 
stature  and  was  growing  still;  undersized  no 
longer  but  now  in  his  nineteenth  year  compact 
and  erect,  shapely,  seasoned  and  soldierly-look 
ing.  He  had  won  his  share  in  the  heroism  of  the 
campaigns  of  the  Wilderness,  written  lastingly 
down  into  the  world's  history  of  good  fighting — 
the  fighting  of  the  pure  old  American  stock  in 
a  pure  old  American  quarrel  and  war.  He  was 
already  a  veteran  battle  unit  of  the  South  in  one 
of  its  beaten  armies  of  unconquered  men.  All 
his  earlier  work  on  the  farm  had  been  prepara 
tion  for  his  development  into  the  tried  and  hardy 

146 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

soldier.  Hardships  there  had  showered  upon  him 
here  their  reward.  For  when  hardships  come  to 
a  youth  who  knows  how  to  mint  their  rough  ore 
into  gold,  the  yield  for  him  is  treasure  indeed. 
Further  behind  in  his  life  lay  his  great  American 
inheritance  of  old  dogged  indomitable  Anglo- 
Saxon  pioneer  traits. 

The  two  comrades  strolled  gaily,  carelessly,  as 
though  not  aware  that  a  few  miles  distant  a  hos 
tile  army  was  hunting  them  and  their  comrades 
down,  closing  in  upon  them,  crushing  them  with 
equipments,  supplies,  numbers.  Almost  in  reach 
of  the  ear  was  the  music  of  Northern  military 
bands  of  ruddy-faced  musicians  with  new  instru 
ments;  almost  within  hearing  was  the  pathos  of 
melodies  of  love  and  home,  played  to  conquering 
troops  near  the  end  of  the  war  and  welcoming 
them  back  to  soft  delights. 

At  nearly  every  step  the  two  friends  were  hailed 
or  halted  by  other  soldiers  as  light-hearted  as  them 
selves — the  ragged  and  doomed  gay.  For  what 
these  veterans  lived  on  was  not  the  vicissitudes  of 
war  but  their  proved  traits  as  men.  They  knew 

H7 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

that  they  had  within  themselves  what  could  not 
be  captured  or  conquered:  their  bravery,  their  en 
durance,  their  loyalty,  their  soldierly  honor.  Out 
of  these  elements  of  nature  they  drew  their  laugh 
ter  and  their  light  hearts.  Their  cause  might  be 
overwhelmed  but  their  characters  could  not  be 
crushed. 

This  morning  there  was  a  ripple  of  excitement : 
it  had  become  known  that  they  were  on  the  eve 
of  a  great  battle,  perhaps  the  last  of  their  battles. 
Whatever  the  issue  between  an  overpowering  and 
an  overpowered  army,  it  meant  for  each  of  them 
one  more  victory  of  personal  endurance  and  sur 
vival  or  a  soldier's  grave  and  glory.  A  group  had 
formed  not  far  from  headquarters  and  the  talk 
was  of  this  struggle  near  at  hand.  The  two 
friends  joined  the  group.  By  and  by  some  one 
drew  the  attention  of  the  rest  to  the  other  great 
event  of  camp  life  next  to  battles:  the  mail  had 
arrived.  As  it  happened  now,  a  special  mail 
was  reaching  headquarters;  a  courier  had  just 
been  seen  to  dismount.  A  little  later  an  orderly, 
well  known  to  those  gay,  loitering  comrades, 

148 


He  was  already  a  veteran  battle  unit. 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

came  out  and  approached  the  group,  bringing  in 
his  hand  several  letters. 

"A  letter  for  Joseph  Sumner."  He  delivered 
it  and  passed  on. 

The  letter  had  the  thickness  of  a  little  book. 
It  was  heavily  sealed  and  it  was  significantly 
stamped  as  from  Federal  headquarters.  As  Jo 
seph  Sumner  received  the  letter  and  saw  the  hand 
writing,  his  comrades  observed  a  death-like  pal 
lor  spread  over  his  face. 

"I  will  leave  you  here,  Fairfax,"  he  muttered, 
and  turned  away.  He  went,  straggling  weakly, 
toward  the  extreme  edge  of  the  camp.  The 
wood  was  thickest  out  there  and  he  sat  down  be 
hind  a  big  tree  on  the  side  screened  from  obser 
vation. 

Letters  from  home!  The  rain  of  those  letters 
upon  fathers  and  sons  and  husbands  and  brothers 
and  lovers  was  more  dreaded  than  the  rain  of  bul 
lets.  They  sometimes  tore  wounds  worse  than 
those  of  steel  and  shell.  Soldiers  saw  their  com 
rades,  after  reading  letters  from  home,  begin  to 
wander  around  half-crazed.  They  often  noticed 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

them  go  off  by  themselves  in  some  quiet  spot,  if 
there  was  one,  into  their  tents,  if  there  were  none, 
and  lie  down  flat  on  their  faces  and  hold  their 
heads  as  though  these  were  bursting  with  prob 
lems  worse  than  pain.  Often  during  those  last 
years  there  came  upon  the  exhausted  soldier  of  the 
South  a  strange  sudden  day-blindness,  so  that  he 
would  have  to  be  led  around  by  a  comrade.  A 
letter,  arriving  for  him  during  his  affliction,  would 
have  to  be  read  to  him:  the  comrade  who  under 
took  to  read  such  a  letter  sometimes  broke  down, 
could  not  get  on  with  it  at  all.  A  day  or  two 
before  this  Joseph  Sumner,  while  talking  with 
two  young  Creoles  of  a  New  Orleans  company,  had 
seen  a  letter  delivered  to  one  of  the  brothers,  who 
had  glanced  at  it  and  with  a  cry,  "Tout  ffirdu!" 
had  dropped  senseless. 

Some  of  his  own  messmates  had  been  detailed 
to  shoot  men,  model  soldiers,  after  they  had  re 
ceived  letters  from  their  homes.  They  had  over 
taken  these  frantic  men  and  dragged  them  back 
into  camp;  had  marched  them  out  and  shot  them 
at  sunrise.  Often  officers,  forced  by  discipline  to 

152 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

order  these  military  executions,  would  gladly  have 
thrown  arms  of  humanity  around  those  whom 
they  condemned  to  death.  That  was  the  soldier's 
terror  as  the  war  drew  out  longer  and  longer  and 
the  rain  of  the  letters  became  thicker  and  thicker: 
that  was  his  terror — the  shallow  ditch  in  which 
one  of  those  shot  men  was  buried  quickly  with 
the  averted  faces  of  his  brothers  in  arms.  That 
black  hole  was  not  in  any  cemetery;  not  within 
any  military  inclosure,  on  no  plain  of  honor,  in 
no  country,  not  in  any  potter's  field :  it  was  on  the 
rejected  waste  of  nature  where  the  human  rat  had 
been  stamped  out  of  existence  and  thrust  into 
oblivion — the  scampering  rat  of  the  army,  the 
deserter. 

The  will  of  the  Southern  soldier  was  set 
against  such  a  fate  for  himself  as  the  war  drew 
to  a  close;  more  and  more  it  became  his  supreme 
ideal  to  stand  fast,  to  be  on  the  field  at  the  death 
of  his  cause  or  to  be  in  his  grave  with  his  com 
rades'  devotion. 

Joseph  Sumner  sat  at  the  root  of  the  tree,  on 
its  hidden  side,  with  his  letter  in  his  hand.  It 

153 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

was  the  first  news  to  reach  him  since  he  left  home. 
Of  what  had  taken  place  there  meantime  he  pos 
sessed  no  knowledge.  He  himself  had  never 
written  through  lack  of  opportunity;  and  there 
fore  his  heart  had  never  sent  back  its  messages, 
and  was  this  moment  filled  with  the  things  he 
had  long  wished  to  pour  out  to  each  of  two  loved 
women.  He  could  not  shake  off  the  feeling  that 
these  first  urgent  tidings  were  grave  tidings;  he 
noticed  Lucy  Morehead's  handwriting  and  he  no 
ticed  the  seal  of  Federal  headquarters,  a  sign  of 
the  powerful  prompt  influence  of  his  uncle. 

He  dared  not  open  his  letter.  With  each  mo 
ment  of  postponement  his  dread  became  more  hor 
rible.  He  began  to  say  to  himself  that  in  some 
way  this  letter  was  going  to  be  the  end  of  him ;  it 
was  going  to  shatter  him,  break  him  in  pieces;  it 
would  end  one  or  end  both  of  the  most  cherished 
dreams  of  his  life.  Those  dreams  were  that  at 
the  close  of  the  war  he  would  some  day  quietly 
open  the  yard  gate  and  walk  up  the  pavement  to 
his  mother,  sitting  on  the  porch;  he  would  stand 
before  her  so  grown  and  changed  as  to  be  hardly 

154 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

recognized.  His  reproach  of  littleness  having 
been  taken  away  by  nature  in  her  own  time. 
Then  he  would  hear  her  cry  and  feel  her  arms 
about  him  and  have  his  face  covered  with  her 
kisses  of  memory  and  her  proud  tears.  He,  tear 
ing  himself  loose  would  hurry  across  the  fields  to 
Lucy  Morehead  and  find  her  wherever  she  was 
and  infold  her  at  last  as  his — his  for  long  bright 
years  on  the  farm,  the  years  of  peace,  with  her 
children  about  her. 

He  said  that  this  letter  was  going  to  destroy 
those  hopes.  If  it  was  to  be  so,  then  he  wanted  a 
few  minutes  more  of  happiness.  He  asked  for  a 
respite  in  which  at  least  to  say  good-by  to  joys 
long  looked  forward  to. 

He  laid  the  letter  down  beside  him  and  leaned 
back  against  the  trunk  of  the  tree  and  closed  his 
eyes.  He  gave  himself  up  to  the  forest,  to  the 
perfect  day,  to  beautiful  things,  to  his  dreams. 

The  season  was  forward  and  spring  was  on 
the  long  northward  march.  Miles  southward  on 
this  side  of  the  camp  peach-orchards  had  burst  into 
bloom  around  farm-houses — far-seen  masses  of 

155 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

rose  color  like  garlands  strewn  on  the  bare  ground 
for  the  feet  of  the  bridal  spirit.  In  the  depths 
of  nearer  forests  dogwood  trees  hung  out  by  the 
way  their  samite  stars;  oak  trees  swung  as  in 
unison  their  military  tassels.  Water-courses  ran 
swift  and  clear,  verdure  had  sprouted  along  their 
banks,  brook  willows  turned  greenish  gold. 
Within  gunshot  of  the  camp  the  wild  turkey,  with 
red  wattles  and  burnished  wings,  strutted  in 
frenzies  of  gallantry  and  gobbled  and  tramped 
his  conqueror  passion.  On  a  rotted  log  the  cock 
grouse,  loud  drummer  of  nature's  army,  drummed 
to  his  soft  meek  mate.  Up  and  down  the  gray 
trunks  of  ash  trees  the  delicate  little  gray-and-red 
sapsucker  was  keen  to  tap  the  fountains  of  the 
sap  rising  within;  on  jutted  roots  the  lean  chip 
munk  paused  a  moment  with  hungry  indecision; 
and  from  high-swung  summits  the  gray  squir 
rel,  with  a  single  leap,  built  upon  the  perilous  air 
his  bold  aerial  bridge.  Nature  budded  and 
burst  forth  and  sang  and  leaped  and  planned  for 
love,  planned  for  life,  around  the  soldiers  isolated 
from  love  and  threatened  with  annihilation. 

156 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

Above  the  camps  of  carnage  stretched  the  ancient 
unbroken  peace  of  the  heavens,  with  only  some 
little  white  clouds  drifting  far  away,  like  puffs  of 
smoke  from  unseen  cannon,  for  memories  of  wars 
long  ago  fought  out  and  ended. 


157 


CHAPTER  II 

JOSEPH  SUMNER  with  his  eyes  now 
opened  and  now  closed,  gave  himself  up  to 
the  spring  day,  answered  its  youthful  call  to  him 
as  though  the  answer  were  the  last  he  would  ever 
make;  then  sat  up  and  tore  open  the  envelop. 
Within  were  two  letters,  the  longer  of  which  was 
as  follows: 

Dear  Joe: 

Nearly  two  years  have  passed  since  we  told  one  an 
other  good-by.  It  seems  more  than  two  years  to  me, 
because  the  whole  of  my  life  has  passed  since  then. 
I  have  been  one  person  living  two  lives,  one  life  with 
Tom  and  you  in  the  armies,  and  the  other  here  at  home, 
out  in  the  country,  with  your  mother  and  myself.  Now, 
after  waiting  so  long  for  a  chance,  I  am  writing  as  fast 
as  I  can.  My  letter  ought  to  reach  you  quickly,  as  it  is 
to  go  from  Union  headquarters  through  the  influence  of 
your  uncle.  He  has  consented  because  your  mother  re 
quested  him.  That  will  sound  strange  to  you  but  the 
explanation  will  come  later  in  my  letter.  In  the  envelop 
you  should  find  two  letters :  the  short  one  she  asked  me  to 

158 


A    few    miles    distant    a   hostile    army    was    hunting    them 
down. 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

write  and  this  long  one,  of  which  she  knows  nothing. 
You  remember  asking  me  to  tell  you  the  truth  about  your 
mother.  I  keep  my  promise.  But  I  must  go  back  to  the 
beginning  and  try  to  remember. 

The  morning  after  you  left, 'as  soon  as  breakfast  was 
over  and  I  could  get  away  from  the  children,  I  went 
back  to  where  we  parted.  No  dew  had  fallen  that  night 
to  lift  the  grass.  The  prints  of  our  figures  were  still 
there  side  by  side.  I  sat  down  near. 

By  and  by  I  heard  in  the  distance  a  long,  clear  sound, 
growing  louder  and  louder  as  it  came  toward  me,  and 
then  fainter  and  fainter  as  it  was  carried  in  other  di 
rections,  a  sound  soft  and  beautiful.  It  came  from 
the  big  sea-shell  in  your  home,  which,  when  I  was  a 
little  girl,  I  used  many  times  to  listen  to  hear  blown  like 
a  trumpet  of  the  deep  blue  ocean.  Then  the  sound  was 
meant  to  reach  your  father  wherever  he  might  be  on 
the  farm  and  to  tell  him  that  he  was  wanted  at  the 
house  at  once,  either  because  some  visitor  had  come  or 
because  something  serious  had  happened.  There  the 
sound  was  now,  long  and  loud  and  clear,  searching  the 
farm  for  you;  telling  you  to  come  at  once,  you  were 
wanted. 

At  last  the  echoes  died  away.  They  made  me  realize 
how  truly  you  were  gone.  They  would  never  overtake 
you  now  nor  bring  you  back. 

By  and  by  I  saw  your  mother  coming  along  the  up 
ward  path  through  the  fields,  walking  faster  than  I 
had  ever  known  her. 

161 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

My  tears  dried  themselves,  and  I  got  up  and  with 
drew  a  little  away  from  the  path  to  let  her  pass ;  for  I 
thought  she  must  be  on  her  way  to  my  mother.  But 
she  came  over  to  within  a  few  paces  of  me  and  stopped, 
and  then  I  turned  round,  exposing  to  her  my  red  and 
swollen  eyes.  They  may  have  told  just  the  story  she  was 
looking  for. 

She  did  not  bid  me  good  morning  but  asked  a  ques 
tion,  as  though  I  were  in  the  wrong  and  it  were  her 
right  to  command  me: 

"Is  Joe  over  here?" 

With  resentment  at  being  so  spoken  to,  I  replied 
rudely  that  you  were  not. 

"Do  you  know  where  he  is?"  she  demanded. 

With  triumph  as  being  closer  to  you,  I  said  that  you 
had  gone  South  to  join  the  army. 

The  intelligence  staggered  her.  From  that  moment, 
even  when  she  listened  to  me,  she  forgot  me.  I  was  noth 
ing;  you  were  everything.  A  moment  afterward  she 
started  back  but  a  few  paces  off  paused  and  stood  side- 
wise,  with  her  eyes  fixed  pitifully  on  the  distant  south 
ern  horizon.  Again  she  questioned  me  sternly: 

"When  did  he  first  tell  you  he  was  going?" 

I  replied  sharply  that  you  told  me  after  supper  the 
evening  before. 

This  somehow  caused  her  especial  pain.  Different 
emotions  began  to  tear  her.  She  wished  to  question  me 
further ;  pride  forbade.  Then  even  pride  gave  way. 

"And  he  said  nothing  else  about  his  going  away*?" 
162 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

As  coldly  as  I  could  repeat  any  words  of  yours,  I  told 
her  that  you  had  made  me  promise  to  take  care  of  her. 
That  was  a  blow  of  another  kind;  she  suddenly  looked 
broken ;  then  harshly  again  she  pressed  me  to  answer : 

"He  left  no  message?" 

I  said  you  had  left  no  message. 

"No — good-by — for  any  one?" 

I  said  you  had  told  me  good-by;  you  had  left  no 
good-by  for  any  one  else. 

She  turned  and  walked  away  slowly.  She  had  come 
bareheaded  and  the  bright  sun  shone  on  her  smooth 
glossy  blonde  hair.  She  had  on  the  little  gray  cape 
which  goes  with  her  gray  silk  dress,  and  this  made  her 
look  all  the  more  like  an  officer.  Straight  and  with 
out  faltering  she  walked  away  across  the  autumn  field. 
I  don't  know  why,  but  as  I  watched  her,  I  noticed  the 
loneliness  of  the  blue  sky  and  how  frail  the  butterflies 
were  that  started  up  before  her  out  of  the  clover  and 
from  the  field  daisies  around  her  feet.  One  little  yellow 
butterfly  caught  up  with  her  and  rode  gaily  away  on 
her  shoulder. 

I  am  sure,  Joe,  that  we  often  do  a  thing,  and  then 
at  the  sight  of  what  we  have  done  we  are  ready  to  deny 
we  did  it.  We  are  thought  to  be  insincere  in  our  denial ; 
but  perhaps,  after  all,  it  is  not  we  ourselves  who  do 
such  things  but  only  some  little  fault  in  us.  As  I  watched 
her,  I  was  ready  to  deny  my  unkindness  to  her  and  to 
say  it  was  not  myself  but  my  fault  that  made  me  unkind. 
I  hope  you  will  think  so,  too. 

163 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

That  was  the  longest  day  of  my  life.  Early  next 
morning,  from  where  I  sat  I  could  see  that  the  window- 
shutters  of  your  room  were  thrown  open.  The  negro 
woman  washed  the  windows.  They  stayed  open  all 
day,  and  I  knew  that  your  room  was  being  cleaned  and 
closed.  Early  the  day  following  the  servant  caught  the 
horse  and  rode  to  town  with  the  basket  of  peaches,  and 
I  knew  that  your  mother  was  alone,  and  I  thought  it 
time  to  begin  to  keep  my  promise  to  you.  I  had  lain 
awake  nearly  all  night  trying  to  resolve  to  go. 

She  was  sitting  on  the  side  porch,  rocking  and  not 
doing  anything.  When  she  saw  me  she  smiled  and  rose 
and  welcomed  me  without  a  trace  of  the  resentment  I 
deserved;  and  with  her  old  affection  for  me,  as  though 
it  were  coming  back.  She  looked  younger,  prouder, 
aroused  to  a  new  happiness  in  her  life. 

Soon  she  asked  me  whether  I  should  like  to  see  your 
room.  We  went  up-stairs ;  it  had  been  put  in  order. 
She  pushed  one  window-shutter  open.  The  light  of  that 
one  open  shutter  was  so  dreadful ;  it  was  such  a  reminder 
that  it  was  of  no  use  to  open  the  others.  On  your  bureau 
was  a  little  vase  of  morning-glories  which  she  had 
gathered  at  dawn.  In  the  cool  midday  shadow  of  the 
room  they  bloomed  on  as  though  it  were  night  and  the 
stars  shone  on  them.  It  made  me  think  that  often,  as 
the  army  marched  from  place  to  place,  you  would  be 
sleeping  of  warm  nights  out  in  the  fields  and  morning 
glories  would  open  about  you  and  the  dews  would  fill 
them  as  my  tears. 

164 


\ 


I  went  back  to  where  we  parted 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

She  could  not  say  much,  nor  I.  "Shall  we  go  down*?" 
she  asked  at  length,  and  went  across  and  shut  the  one 
lonesome  shutter.  The  room  was  darkened,  and  we  were 
standing  near  each  other;  and  then  I  don't  know  what 
happened  except  that  I  think  I  screamed,  and  we  were 
in  each  other's  arms,  clinging  to  each  other  and  sobbing 
and  blinded :  friends  again  through  the  same  love  and  the 
same  grief  and  the  same  loneliness. 

I  remember  you  asked  me,  if  I  ever  wrote,  to  let  you 
know  what  took  place  the  day  after  you  left  and  the  day 
after  that.  I  have  tried  to  do  this,  and  now  I  must 
hasten,  though  I  will  stop  to  tell  you  one  more  thing. 
The  following  day  your  mother,  almost  as  soon  as  she 
welcomed  me,  said  with  tenderest  pride,  "I  must  show  you 
what  I  have  found  in  one  of  the  closets."  She  took  me 
to  your  father's  bureau,  where  the  family  papers  are 
kept  and  brought  out  your  scrap-book.  "Look,"  she  said, 
smiling;  "here  are  all  the  big  battles  of  the  war.  He 
had  cut  the  account  of  each  one  out  of  the  newspapers. 
And  look!  He  pasted  the  Southern  victories  at  the 
front  and  the  Union  victories  at  the  back!  Here 
in  this  place  he  brought  together  the  battles  in  which 
his  father  and  his  brothers  were  killed,  or  were  wounded 
and  afterward  died  of  their  wounds.  He  lived  through 
the  war  in  this  way,  off  to  himself."  As  she  uttered  those 
words,  her  face  showed  things  too  deep  for  me:  I  sup 
pose  they  were  a  mother's  feelings. 

For  more  than  a  year  we  did  not  know  where  you 
were;  but  then  Tom  was  wounded  and  taken  prisoner 

167 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

and  I  went  to  see  him  and  to  carry  some  things  to  him, 
a  box  of  things.  And  from  him  we  learned  in  what 
part  of  the  army  you  were.  He  had  gathered  it  from 
the  Southern  newspapers  which  gave  lists  of  the  wounded 
that  never  found  their  way  North.  He  told  us  how  you 
had  been  wounded  and  had  gotten  well  and  had  gone  back 
to  the  front.  You  had  never  written,  but  we  knew  you 
had  never  had  a  chance. 

I  wish  my  letter  ended  here  but  it  must  be  otherwise. 

Your  mother's  health  has  not  been  good.  It  was  long 
before  she  would  consent  to  see  the  doctor  but  when  at 
last  he  came,  he  must  have  advised  her,  though  she  told 
me  nothing.  But  she  grew  so  serious,  so  quiet  after 
that,  with  you  only  on  her  mind.  "If  I  could  only  write 
to  him !"  she  said.  "But  I  cannot  ask  his  uncle  to  show 
us  any  kindness." 

A  few  days  ago,  as  she  was  lying  down  and  I  sat 
beside  her  reading  the  newspaper,  she  interrupted  me 
as  with  a  great  resolve.  "Lucy,"  she  said,  "you  will  have 
to  write  a  letter  for  me  to  my  husband's  brother.  Joe 
wished  it  and  Joe  was  right.  And  perhaps  the  wrong 
was  not  all  on  one  side.  No,  the  wrong  was  not  all  on 
one  side.  Write  the  letter  that  I  thought  would  never  be 
written." 

Your  uncle  came  at  once — came  so  quickly  and  gen 
erously  that  I  think  it  must  have  been  true  that  he  was 
partly  in  the  right.  When  he  left,  I  was  walking  in  the 
garden  and  saw  him ;  he  was  under  the  influence  of  deep 
and  violent  emotion.  He  sent  some  of  his  best  servants 

168 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

— your  mother's  old  trained  servants — to  take  care  of 
her  and  he  has  driven  out  many  times  since.  She  lacks 
nothing,  she  has  every  comfort.  But  the  comforts  mean 
nothing  to  her;  she  wants  only  you.  It  is  beyond  any 
thing  I  could  ever  have  believed  possible  to  a  woman's 
heart,  were  I  not  now  old  enough  to  look  into  my  own. 

Many  times  since  then  she  has  said  to  me :  "I  can 
not  send  for  him!  He  cannot  come.  It  might  disgrace 
him !  "  And  yet  to-day  she  looked  at  me  suddenly  and 
said  out  of  the  deeps  of  her  life :  "You  must  write ! 
He  must  come  to  me !" 

So  this  is  my  letter,  which  you  now  understand.  It 
is  written  and  I  am  at  the  end  of  it. 

LUCY  MOREHEAD. 

P.  S. — I  have  not  said  anything  of  myself ;  my  letter 
has  not  been  mine.  But  can  you  understand  all  that 
I  have  gone  through  since  you  left*?  Do  you  know 
what  I  feel  toward  you?  Do  you  realize  what  the  ab 
sence  has  meant  and  what  you  have  become  to  me*?  If 
all  this  be  not  in  your  heart,  I  must  keep  it  in  my  heart. 

LUCY. 

The  shorter  letter  Joseph  Sumner  had  read  first; 
it  ran  as  follows: 

My  dear  Son: 

My  hand  is  not  firm  as  it  was  once  firm.  Lucy 
Morehead  writes  this  letter  for  me.  She  has  been  like  a 
kind  good  daughter  to  me  since  you  went  away,  though 

169 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

she  has  had  cares  enough  of  her  own.  She  has  given 
me  of  her  very  life.  You  will  be  happy  with  her 
through  many  years,  I  trust,  and  however  many  they 
may  be,  you  will  never  know  the  depths  of  her  tender 
ness  and  goodness.  I  am  not  very  well,  my  dear,  dear 
Joseph,  and  the  greatest  desire  of  my  life  is  to  see  you. 
Were  I  stronger,  I  could  wait,  for  there  is  now  no  doubt 
that  the  end  of  the  war  must  be  near.  But  my  health 
is  such  that  I  may  not  risk  delay ;  what  I  am  to  do  must 
be  quickly  done.  So  will  you  come  to  me  quickly4?  I 
understand  only  too  well  what  it  is  I  ask  and  all  that 
it  will  cost  you,  but  you  must  come.  The  cause  you 
fight  for  will  have  to  spare  you  a  few  days  to  her  who 
gives  you  to  it  for  all  the  rest  of  them.  My  son,  I,  too, 
am  soon  to  fight  a  battle,  but  against  a  power  that  con 
quers  all  nations  and  that  is  never  defeated.  On  the 
eve  of  that  battle  I  am  in  great  trouble  and  I  wish  for 
life's  peace.  The  war  by  comparison  is  nothing  to  me, 
the  nation  is  nothing  to  me.  And  all  that  you  are  as  a 
soldier  must  be  nothing  to  you.  You  are  but  the  son 
of  a  mother  whose  need  and  whose  cry  is  to  see  you  and 
to  speak  to  you.  A  great  weight  is  taken  off  me  now  that 
my  letter  is  written.  I  am  happy.  You  will  not  fail  to 
receive  it  and  you  will  not  fail  to  hasten.  I  shall  fight 
off  my  conqueror  till  you  reach  me. 


170 


"Is  Joe   over  here?' 


CHAPTER  III 

IT  was  dead  of  night  in  camp.  The  sky  was 
clear,  the  moon  was  high,  and  its  radiance 
fell  on  the  forms  of  the  soldiers  scattered  about 
on  the  ground  under  the  bare  trees  of  the  forest. 
The  boughs  of  these,  tossed  by  a  roaring  March 
wind,  wrought  out  over  the  sleepers  a  ghostly 
phantasmagoria  of  battle  scenes.  One,  as  it  was 
pushed  violently  backward  and  forward,  became 
a  shadowy  arm  that  ever  hacked  with  a  shadowy 
sword.  Another  uplifted  saber  smote  downward 
and  ever  was  raised  and  smote  again.  Near  the 
ground  a  phantom  bayonet  perpetually  thrust  and 
thrust  with  no  weariness  of  the  fight.  Higher  in 
the  air  an  upright  bough  cast  the  shadow  of  a 
lonely  flagstaff  from  which  the  colors  had  been 
torn.  The  forest  bodied  forth  over  the  dreams 
of  the  sleepers  the  imagery  of  their  familiar  car 
nage.  At  intervals  away  off  on  the  horizon  a 

173 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

cannon  loosed  its  tongue  upon  the  stillness  like 
a  pursuing  hound  of  death.  From  a  near  quar 
ter  of  the  sky  a  shell  started  to  describe  its  arch 
and  burst  at  the  highest  point;  from  an  opposite 
quarter  an  answering  shell  completed  its  arch  and 
dealt  destruction  where  it  came  down.  Almost 
under  these  arches  the  soldiers  slept:  life's  fire 
fused  in  the  one  flame — to  fight  and  to  keep  on 
fighting;  nature  exhausted  to  one  need — slumber, 
rest. 

Scattered  around,  the  sleeping  men  lay  wrapped 
in  blankets  or  overcoats  as  they  had  one  or  the 
other.  Some  had  made  pillows  for  their  heads 
by  wrapping  their  boots  in  their  jackets. 

On  a  single  oilcloth  two  comrades  lay  side  by 
side,  each  enveloped  in  his  ragged  overcoat.  One 
was  dead  asleep,  one  wide  awake.  He,  the  wide 
awake  one,  had  been  tossing  all  night  from  side 
to  side,  wounded  with  a  wound  older  than  the 
nation,  one  of  the  oldest  in  the  world;  tossing 
there  and  sometimes  opening  his  distracted  eyes 
and  seeing  not  far  away,  fluttering  in  the  moon 
light,  beacon  of  honor  or  disgrace  in  the  moon- 

174 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

light,  his  battle-flag — blue  field,  red  bars,  white 
stars. 

At  intervals  he  turned  toward  his  soundly 
sleeping  comrade,  tempted  to  wake  him,  but  as 
often  he  had  turned  away.  At  last  as  though  in 
his  lonely  trouble  he  must  speak  to  something  hu 
man,  he  barely  put  out  his  arm  from  under  his 
overcoat  and  touched  the  shoulder  of  his  mate  and 
shook  him  cautiously.  The  soldier  thus  shaken 
stirred  heavily  but  quickly,  as  trained  soldiers 
even  at  the  point  of  exhaustion  do,  having  grown 
accustomed  to  being  aroused  by  the  sudden  call 
of  duty.  And  instantly  he  asked: 

"Did  you  wake  me,  Joe?" 

"Don't  speak  so  loud,  Fairfax." 

"What  is  the  matter?  Haven't  you  been 
asleep*?"  Then  other  questions  followed  from  a 
friendly  faithful  mind,  slowly  returning  to  full 
consciousness  and  to  the  remembrance  of  things 
noted  down:  "Are  you  sick?  Were  n't  you  sick 
all  day?" 

"I  am  not  sick."  The  voice  was  leaden  with 
the  weight  of  duty,  with  responsibility  and  with 

175 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

heaviness  of  soul.     "There  's  something  I  must 
tell  you.     Come  over  this  way  closer." 

The  soldier  thus  appealed  to  rolled  over  heavily, 
confidingly,  and  stretched  himself  closely  along 
side  his  tent-mate,  ground-mate,  battle-mate.  His 
loyal  ear  was  ready. 

The  story  began  in  the  lowest  whisper  and  with 
a  chatter  of  the  jaws  like  a  chill: 

"You  know  the  letter  I  got  this  morning?" 
The  comrade  alongside  did  not  like  that  sub 
ject.  The  fearful  manner  in  which  it  was  brought 
up  now  put  dread  into  him.  He  made  no  reply 
but  waited  for  more  of  the  story  which  was  on  its 
way  to  his  ear. 

"It  came  through  the  lines.  You  may  remem 
ber  my  telling  you  that  I  have  an  uncle  who  is 
an  influential  Union  man.  He  arranged  to  have 
the  letter  sent  from  headquarters." 

The  voice  broke  off  because  the  speaker  broke 
down. 

The  listening  comrade  gave  no  sign. 
"The  news  is  that  my  mother  is  ill." 
Deeper  silence  followed.  The  young  soldier 

176 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

called  Fairfax  had  never  known  that  the  young 
soldier  called  Joseph  Sumner  had  a  mother  liv 
ing.  Many  an  hour  he  had  been  beguiled  by 
stories  about  the  Kentucky  farm  and  home  and 
about  father  and  brothers  once  there  but  never 
to  be  there  any  more.  He  had  listened  with  ready 
weakness  to  a  volume  of  stories  about  a  fabulous 
Lucy  Morehead.  Though  he  believed  in  Joseph 
Sumner  as  he  believed  in  God,  he  made  his  own 
allowance — a  natural  allowance  in  his  case — for 
this  collection  of  stories.  He  credited  a  fair  half 
of  them  and  understood  the  half  which  he  did 
not  credit  and  liked  that  half  best.  To  him  there 
could  be  no  better  lying  between  comrade  and 
comrade.  Now  at  the  first  mention  of  Joseph 
Sumner's  mother  he  began  to  understand  the 
silence  about  her  and  the  absence  of  stories:  she 
was  not  dead,  as  he  had  assumed,  but  she  had 
been  as  one  dead  to  her  son.  More  and  more 
aroused  with  every  detail  he  heard  he  waited  with 
out  comment  for  the  rest  of  the  story.  The  rest 
was  very  brief: 

"She  has  sent  for  me." 
177 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

The  voice  did  not  seem  to  proceed  from  one  of 
the  men  there  in  camp.  Not  from  the  war,  not 
from  the  nation.  It  traveled  down  from  the 
foundation  of  human  life,  from  the  origin  of  the 
oldest  duty.  And  the  soldier  who  listened  heard 
more  than  duty:  distress,  a  son's  long  silent  love 
now  responding  to  the  call  of  the  sick  mother. 
But  such  a  silence  there  was!  At  last  this  was 
broken  with  a  terrible  whisper,  smothered  at  the 
mouth  itself: 

"I  have  to  go." 

High  overhead  in  the  March  wind  the  shadowy 
sword  hacked  its  victim,  the  bayonet  thrust  at  the 
slain,  the  flagstaff  stood  in  the  silvering  moon 
light  with  its  colors  torn  away. 

The  two  comrade  youths  lay  side  by  side:  one 
limp  and  helpless  as  on  a  hospital  cot;  the  other 
strong  and  starting  in  now  to  help: 

"Are  you  going  to  apply  for  leave  of  absence? 
Do  you  expect  to  be  able  to  get  leave  of  absence?" 
The  tone  in  which  the  question  was  asked  dis 
missed  the  idea  as  impossible.  The  answer  dis 
missed  it  in  the  same  way: 

178 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

"I  do  not.     I  am  not  going  to  apply  for  leave 
of  absence.     I  could  not  get  it  if  I  did  apply." 
The  inevitable  question  followed  quickly: 
"Then  what  are  you  going  to  do?" 
The  quick  answer  was  just  as  inevitable: 
"I  am  going  to  walk  out  of  camp." 
The  soldier  Fairfax  stretched  himself  out  like 
a  man  stiffening  in  death  and  rolled  over  and  lay 
on  his  other  side.     Then  as  quickly  he  wheeled 
back  again  as  though  brought  back  by  a  very 
close  trouble: 

"How  will  you  get  past  the  picket?" 
"Of  course  I  have  thought  of  that.     To-mor 
row  night  you  will  be  on  picket  duty." 

The  words  came  rushing  out  hot  with  indigna 
tion  : 

"And  what  do  you  expect  me  to  do?" 
"I  don't  expect  anything.  I  don't  know  what 
you  will  do:  You  will  have  to  decide  for  your 
self.  I  am  going  to  walk  past  you  and  if  you 
think  it  is  right  for  me  to  go,  I  suppose  you  will 
let  me  pass.  If  you  do  not,  I  suppose  you  will 
shoot  me.  I  do  ask  one  thing:  Don't  stop  me, 

179 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

don't  bring  me  back.  I  don't  want  to  be  ar 
rested  and  dragged  to  headquarters — for  that! 
And  if  you  shoot,  don't  wing  me,  Fairfax,  don't 
cripple  me,  for  God's  sake!  Shoot  to  kill.  I 
don't  want  to  be  brought  back  wounded  and  to 
have  all  of  you  walking  around  me  and  looking 
at  me — not  after  that!  I  can  see  the  eyes  of  all 
of  you  on  me  now,  waiting  for  me  to  get  well 
enough  to  be  shot  at  sunrise."  He  drew  up  in  a 
knot. 

His  comrade  rolled  over  again  and  lay  on  his 
off  side — to  think. 

By  every  path  that  human  beings  travel  there 
hangs  out  a  sign  with  some  one  word.  As  each 
of  us  advances  along  his  road  of  life,  his  sign  ad 
vances  also  and  moves  before  him;  and  soon,  if 
he  is  ever  to  become  wise,  he  has  grown  wise 
enough  to  notice  it  and  to  read  its  solitary  word. 
And  that  word  becomes  the  warning,  the  menace, 
the  terror  of  his  life.  The  commander  of  a  vessel 
at  sea  has  his  word;  the  surgeon  forever  sees 
his;  a  husband  has  one  for  himself  and  a  wife 
knows  hers;  the  judge  when  off  the  bench  has  one 

180 


Ir 


From  him  we  learned  in  what  part  of  the  army  you  were. 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

before  his  conscience;  the  prisoner  in  solitary  con 
finement  collapses  at  one  on  the  walls  of  his  cell ; 
the  actor  walks  out  upon  the  stage,  wondering 
whether  that  night  his  audience  will  not  deliver 
his  word  to  him ;  the  singer  listens  to  his  own  each 
time  he  finishes  a  song;  the  coal-miner  never  for 
gets  the  word  suspended  between  him  and  the  shaft 
of  light  at  the  foot  of  the  pit;  she  whose  whole 
sustenance  depends  upon  the  use  of  eyesight  shud 
ders  at  her  word,  suspended  before  the  long  dark 
tunnel  of  the  optic  nerve.  Whatever  for  each  of 
us  that  word  it  may  be,  it  marks  the  last  outpost 
of  safety,  usefulness,  happiness.  When  we  pass 
beneath  the  sign  and  see  its  word  no  more,  the  end 
of  life's  profitable  journey  is  not  far  off,  if  it  be 
not  already  reached. 

The  minds  of  the  two  comrades  had  met  at  the 
soldier's  fatal  word.  Neither  stirred  for  a  long 
time.  Then  the  comrade  who  lay  with  his  face 
turned  away  wheeled  impetuously  over  again: 

"Why  did  you  tell  me?"  he  asked,  realizing 
what  a  responsibility  had  been  shifted  to  his 
shoulders. 

183 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

"I  had  to  tell  you!  Somebody  in  the  army 
had  to  believe  in  me.  I  could  not  have  gone  at 
all,  if  I  had  not  left  some  one  of  you  to  believe 


in  me." 


The  comrade  groaned  under  the  weight  of  the 
explanation : 

"Does  believing  in  you  make  it  any  easier  for 
me?" 

"I  don't  know.  Perhaps  not.  Perhaps  it 
makes  it  harder.  I  can't  think  it  all  out.  It 's 
trouble  all  around." 

At  intervals  the  conversation  went  on  in  whis 
pers,  passing  slowly  back  and  forth.  Each  word 
became  like  a  judgment  on  character;  the  two 
comrades,  now  chained  together  inextricably, 
seemed  to  be  driven  toward  a  human  bog,  toward 
a  morass  of  the  horrible. 

Once  the  soldier  thus  fatally  involved  in  his 
friend's  fate  saw  a  gleam  of  light  out  on  the  black 
morass.  He  turned  half  over  and  sternly  asked 
a  very  human  question : 

"Who  wrote  the  letter?' 

"Lucy." 

184 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

"Was  it  she  who  urged  you  to  come'?" 
The  reply  issued  from  one  too  wounded  to  be 
wounded  any  more : 

"I  said  my  mother  sent  for  me,  Fairfax." 
The  night  wore  slowly  on :  time  was  a  wounded 
snail.  And  one  was  nearly  silent  now  and  one 
did  most  of  the  talking.  He  would  talk  a  mo 
ment  and  stop  a  moment;  and  altogether  he  was 
like  a  man  carrying  a  load  too  heavy  for  his 
strength,  so  that  he  staggers  forward  a  short  dis 
tance,  then  pauses  before  he  can  get  further.  In 
this  way  the  talking  went  on: 

"I  am  going  out  at  night.  If  I  try  to  go  out 
during  the  day,  I  should  be  stopped  and  I  must 
not  be  stopped.  If  I  start,  I  must  get  away. 
I  '11  have  to  leave  at  night.  But  one  thing  I  will 
not  do:  I  won't  dodge  or  sneak  or  hide  or  crawl. 
I  '11  stand  up  and  walk  out  and  I  can't  do  that 
except  in  the  dark." 

By  and  by  he  went  on  a  little  farther: 
"While  I  say  I  am  going,   I  don't  see  how 
I  can  go.     As  soon  as  I  read  my  letter,  I  said  I 
would  go  and  I  said  it  all  day  and  I  have  been 

185 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

saying  it  all  night.  But  I  don't  see  how  I  can 
ever  do  it.  Still,  if  it  is  my  duty  to  go,  it  is  my 
right  to  go.  And  no  one  can  give  me  permission 
to  do  what  is  right.  How  can  I  ask  any  man 
to  let  me  do  my  duty?  But  to  have  to  go — now! 
When  the  time  comes,  I  don't  believe  I  can  ever 
do  it!  I  don't:  it  is  n't  in  me!" 

"Even  if  you  get  through  the  line,  how  can  you 
go  anywhere  without  any  money?" 

"I  have  all  my  Confederate  money,  half  a 
haversack  full.  And  you  remember,  when  Har- 
dee  died  he  divided  his  and  gave  you  half  and  gave 
me  half.  Of  course  I  '11  have  to  get  out  of  my 
uniform  in  Richmond  and  I  '11  have  to  buy  me  a 
suit  of  clothes.  For  two  or  three  thousand  dol 
lars  I  suppose  I  could  buy  me  some  kind  of  suit  of 
clothes." 

The  soldier's  humor  which  is  to  his  mind  as 
his  tobacco  to  his  body  and  stands  him  in  good 
stead  at  his  worst — a  soldier's  humor  now  reached 
for  and  lighted  its  pipe: 

"Do  you  expect  to  travel  on  your  clothes?" 

"That  is  as  far  as  I  have  thought:  I  have  n't 
186 


Lucy    Morehead    had    come    out    for   her    usual   stroll    in   the 
coolness   of   the   evening. 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

had  time  to  think  it  out  and  I  don't  know  what 
I  '11  do  nor  how  I  '11  travel.  I  may  not  know  until 
I  get  to  Richmond  and  find  out  how  much  my 
Confederate  money  is  worth  in  United  States 
money." 

"It  is  worth  about  one  dollar  to  a  million. 
Your  cravat  will  cost  you  five  thousand.  But  get 
a  bully  red  one!" 

The  moon  was  going  down.  The  stars  were 
fading.  There  was  the  breath  of  morn.  Here 
and  there  vague  bulks  began  to  be  outlined  as  hu 
man  bodies.  The  young  soldier  Fairfax  turned 
over  with  a  sore  heart  toward  his  comrade: 

"When  you  get  back,  I  may  not  be  here  to  be 
your  tent-mate.  My  time  may  have  come  before 
that;  my  bullet  may  have  found  me." 

"You  may  have  another  tent-mate — and  never 
me  any  more." 

"But  suppose  something  happens  to  you,  man! 
Suppose  you  are  never  heard  of  again !" 

"If  anything  happens  to  me  so  that  I  never  get 
there,  and  if  another  letter  comes  for  me,  you 

189 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

open  it  and  read  it  and  send  word  back  to  them 
that  I  started." 

Those  friendships  of  young  brothers-in-arms — 
they  are  the  bright  spot  of  all  armies,  after  cour 
age.  Those  loyalties  and  sacrifices  run  back 
through  wars  to  the  plains  of  Troy,  to  the  tent 
of  Achilles  and  Patroclus. 

Once  Fairfax  spoke  quite  simply  of  a  matter  he 
had  had  in  his  mind  all  the  time : 

"When  I  was  coming  away,  my  mother  gave 
me  a  roll  of  money  and  told  me  I  would  need  it 
often  and  need  it  badly  but  not  to  touch  it  until 
the  time  came  when  I  knew  I  needed  it  most. 
Take  that.  It  ought  to  carry  you  there;  and  it 
will  bring  you  back.  And  remember,  I  would 
have  given  my  life  for  you,  Joe." 

"You  know  that  I — "  speech  failed,  words  gave 
out. 

Fairfax  turned  over  and  muffled  his  head  in 
his  overcoat  to  get  a  little  sleep  as  quickly  as  pos 
sible.  A  moment  later  he  wheeled  halfway  back 
again  to  fire  his  parting  shot : 

"All  the  same,  I  'd  wager  what  little  may  be 
190 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

left  of  me  at  the  end  of  the  war  that  you  '11  be 
mighty  glad  to  see  Lucy!" 

The  gray  of  dawn,  like  a  soft  wing,  moved  over 
the  camp,  fanning  with  light  the  faces  of  the 
soldiers. 

Joseph  Sumner  sat  up  ghastly  and  looked 
around  him.  All  were  asleep.  His  comrade  had 
muffled  his  face  in  his  overcoat  and  was  asleep 
with  the  rest — all  true  soldiers  whatever  befell 
them. 

He  looked  toward  the  east:  it  was  sunrise: 
above  the  crimson  of  dawn  the  clouds  had  grouped 
themselves  like  snow-white  sheep  waiting  for  their 
shepherd  to  lead  them  along  their  road. 

He  thought  of  the  sunlight  as  falling  that  day 
most  searchingly  on  little  spots  scattered  far  and 
wide  over  the  States — little  places  where  soldiers, 
for  forgetting  that  they  were  soldiers  and  for 
remembering  only  that  they  were  human,  lay  in 
the  dirt  forgotten,  riddled  by  their  comrades'  bul 
lets. 

That  night  a  trusted  picket,  stationed  on  the 
side  of  the  camp  nearest  Richmond  in  the  shadow 

191 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

of  thick  roadside  trees,  saw  coming  toward  him 
from  the  direction  of  camp  the  figure  of  a  man. 
As  the  figure  drew  nearer,  he  was  able  to  make 
out  that  it  wore  the  uniform  of  the  Southern 
soldier  but  that  it  bore  no  arms.  Uniformed  but 
stripped  of  its  soldierly  significance,  having  left 
behind  all  the  honor  it  had  won  from  the  day  it 
had  entered  the  ranks,  it  came  on — down  the 
middle  of  the  road — on  its  way  out. 

The  picket  stepped  out  of  shadow  and  stood 
at  attention,  facing  straight  across  the  road.  The 
figure  advanced,  facing  straight  ahead.  It  passed 
at  arm's  length.  It  passed  so  close  that  the 
breaths  of  the  two  mingled,  mingled  for  the  last 
time. 

Then  it  passed  on  and  passed  out. 


192 


Often  she  was  at  her  window  looking 
impatiently. 


CHAPTER  IV 

ON  the  great  plateau  of  central  Kentucky 
the  twilight  of  a  warm  spring  day  was 
falling  with  its  mutable  lights  and  shadows — on 
grassy  uplands  of  forest  farms,  mellowed  brick 
homesteads  set  amid  orchards  of  apple  and 
peach,  yards  of  sweet-breathed  shrubs,  and  gardens 
for  old  and  hardy  and  simple  flowers. 

Lucy  Morehead  had  come  out  to  the  fields  for 
her  usual  stroll  in  the  coolness  of  the  evening. 
Daily  of  late  she  had  felt  especial  need  of  this  hour 
away  from  the  house.  Her  responsibilities  with 
a  frail  mother  and  a  group  of  healthy,  rapidly 
growing  children  were  always  her  first  concern; 
and  those  were  the  days  also,  be  it  remembered, 
not  only  of  a  woman's  mastery  of  her  home  but 
of  her  servitude  to  the  needle.  For  months,  fur 
thermore,  her  strength  had  been  shared  with  the 
sinking  household  on  the  Sumner  farm  near  by. 

195 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

The  strain  had  impoverished  her  own  exuberant 
vitality  and  now  in  order  to  be  of  service  to  the 
rest  she  felt  the  frequent  need  to  be  alone.  For 
there  are  other  dews  than  those  of  the  earth — the 
dews  of  solitude;  there  is  an  inner  twilight  for 
recovery  and  for  rest  after  the  heat  and  burden  of 
the  inner  day.  It  was  toward  these  dews  also, 
toward  this  twilight,  that  she  had  issued  forth. 

Yet  the  motive  of  this  self -withdrawal  was  not 
wholly  generous.  As  she  had  quitted  the  house, 
she  had  brought  away  the  secret  of  an  exquisite 
selfishness;  the  incommunicable  demand  of  her 
heart  was  to  be  alone  with  an  incommunicable 
joy.  From  the  hour  of  the  despatch  of  her  let 
ters  through  the  lines  to  recall  Joseph  Sumner  to 
his  mother's  bedside  her  nature  had  stood  on  the 
tiptoe  of  a  great  expectancy.  After  nearly  two 
years  of  following  him  afar  in  imagination  from 
battlefield  to  battlefield,  she  was  soon  to  see  him 
again,  standing  before  her  in  reality,  matured  and 
scarred  by  war  and  heroisms.  It  was  this  mood, 
this  emotion,  that  likewise  had  impelled  her  to 
seek  separation  from  the  other  members  of  the 

196 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

family;  and  it  was  this  that  now  made  the  twi 
light  hour  out  on  the  meadows,  with  their  thick- 
scattered  buds  and  sprouting  greenness,  as  the  rosy 
hour  of  dawn  to  her — the  very  dawn  of  her  life. 

Ample  time  for  her  grave  summons  to  reach 
him  and  to  bring  him  had  lapsed.  Before  he 
could  possibly  have  come  half-way  home,  she  had 
put  on  her  most  becoming  frock;  but  having  con 
demned  it  before  the  glass,  had  exchanged  it  for 
another  which  also  disappointed;  not  one  she  had 
would  do.  The  windows  of  her  bedroom  opened 
upon  a  range  of  country  stretching  toward  the 
Sumner  farm,  and  often  she  was  at  them,  looking 
impatiently.  Along  the  horizon  a  mile  distant  a 
little  railway  ran  from  the  town  to  a  smaller 
town.  He  might  come  that  way  and  walk  across 
from  the  station  and  she  would  possibly  catch 
sight  of  him  on  the  far-off  treeless  pastures.  At 
the  busiest  hours  of  the  day  she  had  sometimes 
slipped  out  of  the  house  and  hurried  to  the  crest 
of  the  hill,  with  its  little  clump  of  trees, — their 
old  meeting-place, — and  from  that  familiar  look 
out  had  searched  the  yard  and  lots  about  the  Sum- 

197 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

ner  place  and  the  carriage  road  leading  thence  to 
town;  if  he  arrived  by  that  route,  she  might  see 
him  the  moment  he  reached  home. 

Most  of  all  at  night,  sitting  beside  her  candle- 
stand  with  its  bedroom  candle,  the  snowy  sheet 
of  her  bed  turned  down  from  the  snowy  pillows, 
she,  barefoot,  in  her  snowy  nightgown,  slowly 
brushing  her  long  dark  downward-loosened  hair, 
had  wondered  how  it  would  ever  be  possible  for 
her  to  be  alone  with  him  thus.  Yet  at  the 
thought  that  never  thus  wrould  she  be  alone  with 
him  she  forgot  to  brush  her  hair,  forgot  the  candle 
light  flickering  in  her  face. 

For  the  chestnut  plaits  did  not  hang  down  her 
back  any  longer;  they  were  heavy  braids  now, 
looped  this  way  and  that  way  at  the  back  of  her 
head.  Childhood  was  gone,  maidenhood  was 
come,  and  childhood  had  taken  away  with  it  its 
simple  trust  and  maidenhood  had  brought  its  ten 
derer  doubts.  Nature  had  finished  her  for  mar 
riage,  finished  her  for  men,  and  had  thus  early 
set  within  her  the  steadfast  brightness  of  a  great 
and  noble  love.  But  wherever  there  may  be 

198 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

brightness,  there  must  be  shadows ;  and  while  she, 
gazing  into  the  center  of  that  brightness,  beheld 
undimmed  there  all  the  glorious  meaning  of  what 
a  man  is,  off  at  one  side  in  ominous  obscurity  she 
discovered  the  sinister  image  of  what  a  man  may 
be — faithless  and  forgetful. 

Not  one  message  from  him  had  she  ever  re 
ceived  to  let  her  know  that  he  remembered  and 
was  unchanged.  Letters  from  Southern  soldiers 
to  their  sweethearts  did  somehow  often  get 
through  the  lines;  friends  of  hers  in  town  had  re 
ceived  such  letters.  None  had  reached  her  from 
him:  had  he  tried  to  send  a  letter*?  He  must  be 
well-nigh  unrecognizably  changed  by  all  that  he 
had  gone  through:  was  indifference,  was  forget- 
fulness  of  what  had  taken  place  between  them  at 
parting,  one  of  the  changes?  She  suffered  her 
jealous  imagination  to  brew  bitter  draughts  from 
the  thought  that  wherever  the  army  had  been, 
whether  in  Southern  towns  or  out  in  the  Southern 
country,  it  had  never  been  beyond  reach  of  South 
ern  girlhood.  He  had  lived  amid  patriotic  idol 
atry  of  the  soldiers.  When  he  lay  wounded  in 

199 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

the  hospital,  had  not  some  girl  been  everything  to 
him  as  his  nurse?  Had  she  not  bathed  his  face, 
bathed  his  body,  smoothed  his  pillow,  leaned  low 
over  to  say  good  night,  and,  perhaps  yielding  to 
a  look  in  his  eyes,  kissed  him'? 

Thus  late  at  night  when  full  tenderness  came, 
when  love  as  the  forerunner  softly  entered  with 
out  knocking  and  locked  the  door;  when  he  ap 
proached  so  near  that  his  breath  was  on  her  face 
and  his  searching  arms  were  felt — late  at  night 
her  doubts  also  stood  around  and  wounded  her. 
As  with  a  little  breath  of  doubt  she  blew  out  her 
candle,  she  gave  herself  this  solace,  that  soon  she 
would  doubt  no  longer;  the  instant  she  saw  him 
she  would  know  the  truth.  For  her  letter  had 
left  him  with  no  uncertainty  that  she  had  been 
faithful;  she  had  in  effect  trustingly  offered  her 
self  to  him  in  her  only  message  since  they  had 
parted. 

It  was  perhaps  these  wounds,  self-inflicted  dur 
ing  these  days,  that  gave  to  her  countenance  its 
subdued  and  not  unpathetic  loveliness.  The 
great  war  of  the  nation  itself  had  for  years  been 

200 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

its  plastic  molder.  For  are  not  the  most  beauti 
ful  generations  of  the  women  of  any  race  produced 
during  its  long  heroic  wars'?  Is  it  not  what 
women  think  of  distant  fighting-men  that  alone 
carries  their  natures  to  certain  loftiest  ranges  of 
human  expression?  Not  such  beauty  as  comes 
to  other  women  from  thoughts  of  God — women 
whose  brows,  dedicated  to  heaven,  have  the  piti- 
fulness  of  blanched  flowers;  whose  eyes  are  ever 
turned  toward  the  dust  as  though  the  bold  burn 
ing  sun  were  too  human  a  light,  and  these  could 
be  opened  wide  and  unafraid  only  in  dark  places 
before  the  unsidereal  radiance  of  silver  lamps. 
But  beauty  which  answers  with  frank  and  full 
understanding  to  all  there  is  in  the  eyes  of  men, 
when  these  come  home  to  them,  as  their  saviors 
and  lovers,  from  battle-plains  where  blood  ran 
reddest  and  fiercest  near  the  very  wine-presses  of 
death  and  the  young  vineyards  of  the  slain.  Is 
it  nature's  compensation  to  women  for  their  pas 
sionate  unfitness  to  carry  on  war  that  they  can  yet 
help  to  win  its  victories  as  the  mates  of  warriors, 
who  after  the  lapse  of  all  Christian  centuries  are 

201 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

still  to  them  the  foremost  and  the  fullest  of  men? 
It  was  the  nation's  war  also  that  for  years  had 
been  the  one  supreme  plastic  influence  on  her  in 
most  character.  Prayers  for  hospitals  and  pris 
ons  and  trenches  and  battle-lines,  anxiety  for  two 
men  among  those  desperate  unconquered  thou 
sands — first  for  a  brother  and  then  for  a  lover, 
too — had  called  forth  a  breadth  of  compassion,  a 
steadfast  facing  of  the  terrible  realities  of  life  and 
death,  along  with  strength  and  fortitude  to  meet 
life  near  at  hand,  that  had  reared  the  structure 
of  her  nature  almost  into  a  kind  of  simple  and 
innocent  greatness.  The  consecration  of  herself 
to  distant  fighting-men  had  meantime  been  accom 
panied  by  an  ever-increasing  shyness  of  any  man 
near  by.  For  the  farms  of  that  neighborhood 
during  that  interval  had  almost  a  cloistered  pri 
vacy  :  the  male  youth  out  of  those  mellowed  brick 
homesteads  were  gone  to  the  war.  The  very 
paths  across  the  open  fields,  such  as  she  now 
walked  in,  were  hedged  as  with  seclusion  for 
virgin  souls. 


202 


Childhood  was  gone,  maidenhood  was  come,  and  maiden 
hood  had  brought  its  tenderer  doubts. 


CHAPTER  V 

SHE  walked  slowly  to  and  fro  near  the  crest  of 
the  green  hill  beginning  to  darken  in  the  twi 
light.  Once  as  she  was  about  to  turn  in  her  path 
she  saw,  appearing  suddenly  on  the  backbone  of  a 
long  ridge  situated  between  her  and  the  deep- 
golden  light  of  the  sky,  the  figure  of  a  man.  She 
stopped  instantly,  arrested  not  by  fear  but  by  her 
virginal  shyness  of  men — the  hidden  rose  of  love's 
self-consciousness.  There  were  no  strangers  to 
walk  across  those  fields  in  those  years.  This  was 
not  a  farm-hand,  either:  no  farm-hand  possessed 
the  spirit  of  such  a  stride.  The  man  moved  along 
the  ridge  with  a  quick  step  and  with  what  was 
plainly  a  definite  purpose;  he  knew  his  own  mind 
and,  what  is  more,  though  crossing  large  open 
fields,  he  evidently  knew  his  ground  and  kept  to 
his  direction.  That  led  him  neither  toward  her 
nor  away  from  her  but  past  her  at  a  sharp  angle. 

205 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

His  course  would  about  have  been  along  the  bee- 
line  from  the  railway  station  on  the  horizon  to 
the  Sumner  homestead. 

She  watched  him  and  with  each  moment  of 
watching  there  grew  in  her  the  feeling  that  the 
fulfilment  of  hope,  the  fulfilment  of  her  life,  was 
in  that  man.  At  the  same  time  a  double  action 
set  up  in  her  brain:  she  recognized  off  there  on 
the  hill  the  familiar  in  the  unknown,  the  strange 
in  the  remembered.  It  was  as  though  a  long- 
cherished  object  of  memory  had  returned  from  the 
past  in  larger  shape.  The  traveler  moved  swiftly 
forward,  darkly  outlined  against  the  low  gold  of 
the  night,  and  was  about  to  descend  a  long  slope. 
At  that  point  he  must  have  discovered  her  mo 
tionless  figure  some  twenty  yards  off  to  one  side 
of  him,  for  he  suddenly  stopped  as  an  animal 
stops  when  it  is  rapidly  following  a  trail  and  for 
gets  the  scent  in  the  shock  of  discovery  that  it  is 
observed.  He  stood  still,  looking  intently  to 
ward  her,  and  held  in  his  tracks  by  what  he  saw. 
Then  he  started  on  again  more  quickly,  as  though 
he  would  put  greater  distance  between  him  and 

206 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

peril.  A  little  farther  on  he  stopped  abruptly  and 
wavered  with  indecision,  then  wheeled  and  hur 
ried  straight  toward  her.  He  advanced  to  within 
a  few  steps  and  paused  like  a  person  checking 
himself  at  the  limit  of  all  that  is  to  be  allowed. 

There  could  be  no  uncertainty  any  longer :  rec 
ognize  him  she  barely  could,  but  recognize  she 
must,  so  grown  and  soldier-like,  so  lean  and 
hungry-looking,  so  weather-beaten,  so  anxious, 
She  saw  all  this  instantly  in  one  complete  im 
pression.  Definitely  her  mind  first  realized  just 
his  greater  physical  bulk,  his  heaviness.  And 
definitely  her  heart  went  out  on  a  mission  of  its 
own  and  made  its  choice  of  a  single  feature — 
the  thick,  short  golden  fringe  on  his  lip.  Be 
yond  everything  else  her  heart  noted,  against  the 
background  of  his  pale  face,  that  gold  of  youth, 
that  pledge  of  manhood  on  his  mouth,  the  rush 
of  life's  springtime  in  him. 

One  swift  moment  sufficed  for  all  this  and  an 
other  swift  moment  sufficed  in  which  to  realize 
another  change — the  change  of  her  forebodings 
and  her  dread:  he  was  not  coming  forward  to 

207 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

clasp  her  hand;  he  did  not  speak  to  her  but  stood 
off  at  formal  distance,  looking  at  her  in  silence, 
though  evidently  troubled  by  his  own  conduct. 
There  was  no  greeting  for  her  even  in  his  eyes. 
Powerful  emotions  she  did  see  in  him;  they  were 
too  powerful  to  be  concealed.  He  struggled  with 
them  until  he  had  attained  enough  of  self-mastery 
to  put  the  rest  aside  and  deal  with  one.  And  to 
this  one  he  gave  utterance  as  though  it  explained 
the  whole  purpose  of  his  presence  there : 
"My  mother — how  is  my  mother4?" 
For  days  she  had  considered  how  best  to  break 
the  news  to  him,  should  she  see  him  first  and 
should  that  duty  fall  to  her.  But  he  had  de 
stroyed,  along  with  the  mood  to  sympathize,  the 
very  language  of  sympathy;  and  in  what  other 
language  to  announce  to  him  what  she  must  she 
did  not  know.  The  shock  to  her  own  pride 
broke  down  all  her  plans,  and  she  hesitated  from 
lack  of  presence  of  mind,  from  uncertainty. 

Upon  her  silence,  as  against  a  barrier  causing 
delay,  he  threw  himself  with  a  kind  of  despera 
tion: 

208 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

"I  received  your  letter.  I  started  as  soon  as  I 
could,  the  night  after  it  reached  me.  How  is  my 
mother?" 

She  still  hesitated;  then,  yielding  perhaps  to 
some  womanly  instinct  to  bring  the  past  into  the 
present  and  make  it  an  instrument  of  reproach 
for  the  future,  she  said  to  him  with  simple  dig 
nity: 

"She  who  was  kind  and  faithful  to  me  can  be 
kind  and  faithful  no  more."  It  was  her  triumph 
that  she  could  reproach  him  with  his  own  mother. 

He  understood  only  too  well  that  he  had  ar 
rived  too  late.  The  moment  for  which  he  had 
sacrificed  himself  as  a  soldier  had  moved  on  un 
mindful  of  his  sacrifice.  Old  rude  and  angry 
words  were  never  to  be  taken  back  now ;  regret  for 
them  would  never  reach  their  goal;  forgiving  eyes' 
never  look  into  forgiving  eyes  and  say  how  false 
the  worse  part  of  life  is  to  the  better  part. 

"Is  my  mother  dead!"  he  said  with  muted 
breath.  In  it  was  the  vain  struggle  to  forestall 
the  summons  of  mortality.  And  the  years  of  his 
boyhood  seemed  to  come  forward  into  that  mo- 

209 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

ment;  the  years  that  seemed  yet  to  be  drained 
themselves  backward  into  that  valley  of  bereave 
ment. 

"Is  my  mother  dead!" 

He  took  off  his  hat  and  stood  bared  and  rev 
erent  and  remorseful,  looking  toward  his  home, 
empty  of  all  he  had  loved  there.  She  waited 
in  silence  behind  him,  now  ready  to  forget  herself 
and  to  help  him.  He  turned  to  her  and  pointed 
downward : 

"What  is  the  meaning  of  that'?"  he  asked. 
"What  is  the  meaning  of  all  that?" 

From  where  they  stood  candle-lights  could  be 
seen  in  the  windows  of  the  house,  up-stairs  and 
down-stairs.  Outside  was  the  playful  barking 
of  dogs.  From  one  grazing  lot  came  the  busier 
tinkling  of  bells,  denoting  the  sharpened  appetite 
of  sheep  as  the  grass  cools  after  the  day's  heat 
and  dews  begin  to  freshen  it.  Around  the  stable 
sounded  the  whistling  and  singing  of  negroes, 
through  with  the  feeding.  In  another  lot  boomed 
the  mellow  clamor  of  calves  just  separated  from 
their  mothers  for  the  night.  From  somewhere 

210 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

arose  the  miserly  dissatisfaction  of  pigs  about 
their  troughs.  The  whole  place,  empty  and  deso 
late  to  him,  teemed  with  alien  life — people,  serv 
ants,  dogs,  other  domestic  animals. 

"What  is  the  meaning  of  it  all?"  he  asked,  ap 
pealing  to  her  in  bewilderment. 

"Your  uncle  has  moved  to  the  place,"  she  an 
swered.  "He  is  to  occupy  it  with  his  family  until 
you  come."  Then  she  added,  with  unselfish 
womanly  impulse  to  give  him  good  news :  "The 
will  has  been  read  and  everything  is  yours.  Your 
uncle  is  to  stay  only  till  you  come  home  from 
the  war." 

He  turned  again  and  stood  looking  down  to 
ward  his  birthplace,  now  his  wealth.  There  must 
have  swelled  in  him  the  fresh  feeling  of  power, 
of  stability  in  the  world,  of  permanence  in  time 
and  place,  that  come  to  us  with  the  first  owner 
ship  of  property  and  the  undisputed  leadership  of 
affairs.  Such  a  moment  liberates  resources  of 
character  which  invade  even  the  coming  years 
and  attach  their  possessions  to  our  present  lives, 
our  honors,  and  our  peace.  He  fell  into  silent 

211 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

contemplation;  perhaps  for  a  few  moments  he 
may  have  passed  into  bright  dreams;  then  with  a 
slow  motion  of  his  hand  he  pushed  the  visions 
away  and  turned  to  her. 

She  had  drawn  a  sealed  letter  from  the  bosom 
of  her  dress. 

"Your  mother  left  this  letter  with  me  for  you," 
she  said  in  the  manner  of  fulfilling  a  duty,  "and 
she  asked  me  to  tell  you  that  she  had  written  in 
it  what  she  had  wished  to  say  to  you.  She  felt 
sure  that  nothing  would  keep  you  from  coming. 
I  was  to  give  this  to  you  and  to  tell  you  that  she 
was  happy." 

She  walked  over  and  handed  the  letter  to  him 
and  stepped  back  from  him.  He  received  it  and 
put  it  in  into  his  pocket  and  stepped  back  from 
her. 

"Your  kindness  to  my  mother —  But  I  cannot 
say  anything — "  He  broke  off  abruptly  and  then 
immediately  began  again :  "I  am  to  start  back  in 
the  morning;  there  is  no  train  to-night.  I  '11  sleep 
out  here."  He  pointed  as  he  spoke  toward  the 
clump  of  trees  not  far  off.  "Will  you  bring  me 

212 


She   saw,   appearing   suddenly   on   the   backbone   of   a   long   ridge    situated 
between  her  and  the  deep-golden  light  of  the  sky,  the  figure  of  a  man. 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

some  supper  and  leave  it  there  for  me*?  Just  a 
ration:  a  little  bacon,  some  corn-bread,  a  tin  cup 
of  coffee?' 

He  asked  this  as  of  a  stranger;  his  tone  implied 
that  it  was  nothing  that  any  stranger  would  not 
do  for  any  other  stranger.  Having  so  made  his 
request,  he  left  it  plain  that  such  was  the  end  of 
their  interview  and  that  he  waited  for  her  to  leave 
him. 

She  did  not  go.  She  forgot  to  go.  The  rea 
sons  were  understood  by  her  of  his  not  wishing 
to  go  for  the  night  to  his  own  house.  But  the 
thought  of  his  sleeping  out  on  the  ground  in  the 
bare  field,  the  pitifulness  of  it  in  his  condition, 
in  his  wretchedness!  The  old  law  of  the  hos 
pitality  of  the  land,  which  many  a  time  had 
bridged  so  much,  now  bridged  the  alienation  he 
had  forced. 

"Won't  you  come  to  the  house  for  the  night?" 
she  asked,  letting  it  be  known,  however,  that  hos 
pitality  only  was  what  she  offered.  "Don't  sleep 
out  in  the  field,  on  the  ground!" 

He  shook  his  head  and  turned  half  round  and 
215 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

stood  silent.  She  pleaded  with  him  anxiously, 
tenderly  as  any  woman  might: 

"Come  and  sleep  in  Tom's  room;  in  Tom's 
bed!" 

He  wheeled  and  walked  off  down  the  slope  to 
ward  his  house. 

To  a  great  love  there  may  sometimes  be  a  spe 
cies  of  fascination  in  cruelty:  at  least  it  is  not 
treachery.  Cruelty  can  hurt  but  it  cannot  disgust. 
It  may  be  fought  and  ended;  it  does  not  have 
to  be  tolerated  and  loathed.  She  stood  looking 
after  him;  and  if  he  left  in  her  mind  a  forlorn 
angered  light,  it  was  a  clear  light:  he  had  been 
straightforward,  clean-cut,  above  deception.  In 
her  letter  she  had  revealed  her  feelings  toward 
him,  had  told  him  that  during  his  long  absence  she 
had  not  changed.  Now  as  plainly  as  possible 
he  had  impressed  it  upon  her  as  his  reply  that  he 
had  become  indifferent. 

She  watched  him  walk  away  unconcerned 
whether  she  stayed  or  went.  His  assumption 
must  have  been  that  she  had  gone,  for  he  moved 
as  though  already  given  up  to  his  own  thoughts: 

216 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

his  walk  was  a  dirge.  It  began  to  dawn  upon 
her  that  his  being  there  might  be  an  enormous 
tragedy  of  some  other  kind;  she  began  to  put  to 
gether  the  little  impressions  he  had  made  upon 
her  in  these  few  minutes,  and  she  reached  the  con 
viction  that  somehow  he  felt  himself  endangered 
by  having  come.  Repulsed,  and  shy  of  every 
man,  she  could  hardly  restrain  herself  from  hasten 
ing  after  him,  for  the  sake  of  all  he  long  had  been 
and  of  what  she  had  hoped  he  would  some  day  be. 
But  quite  aside  from  this,  she  began  to  think  of 
him  as  somehow  a  ruined  soldier,  a  lost  man. 

In  due  time  she  returned  with  his  supper,  not 
with  what  he  had  asked  her  for  but  with  what  she 
thought  he  should  have.  Her  response  was  not  to 
his  request  but  to  his  need.  On  the  grass  near  the 
clump  of  trees  where  he  said  he  should  sleep  she 
spread  a  lavish  banquet.  She  laid  a  small  snowy 
cloth,  and  on  the  cloth  set  forth  solid  sensible 
nourishment  to  give  him  immediate  strength.  A 
little  coffee-pot,  closely  wrapped,  kept  his  coffee 
warm;  there  was  a  favorite  pitcher  for  his  cream. 
Then  farther  away  but  at  arm's-reach,  she  arranged 

217 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

abundant  sweetmeats  which  a  woman  wishes  to 
see  the  man  she  loves  eat  as  she  would  eat  them. 
Lastly,  his  plate  as  at  the  head  of  the  table  and  by 
his  plate  his  napkin,  all  as  perfect  as  care  could 
make  it.  She  looked  it  over,  and  saw  that  nothing 
was  lacking;  then  lest  his  coffee  get  cold,  she 
started  to  go.  With  sudden  impulse  she  unpinned 
her  bunch  of  flowers  and  kissed  them  and  let  fall 
on  them  some  misplaced  tears,  and  came  back  and 
laid  them  on  his  napkin,  then  went  away. 

This,  then,  was  the  end  of  it  all ;  he  was  either 
interested  in  some  one  else  or,  what  was  crueler 
to  believe,  even  without  the  temptation  of  an 
other  she  had  become  nothing  to  him. 


2l8 


CHAPTER  VI 

LATE  at  night  she  sat  at  her  window,  looking 
out  toward  where  he  was.  She  had  not  un 
dressed,  she  had  no  thought  of  going  to  bed — not 
with  him  lying  out  there.  Her  unasked  womanly 
protective  tenderness  went  out  to  him  while  she 
kept  vigil  at  her  window. 

An  hour  passed.  That  angelic  self-oblivion 
which  is  pity  began  to  take  in  her  its  form  of  an 
gelic  courage.  If  she  could  but  know  that  he  had 
come  back  as  he  had  said  he  should;  if  she  could 
satisfy  herself  at  least  that  he  had  found  his  sup 
per!  She  leaned  far  out  on  her  window-sill. 
The  night  was  warm  and  dry.  Stars  were  thick 
over  the  heavens  down  to  the  horizon.  There 
was  no  moon  but  there  was  light.  No  cloud 
threatened  him.  When  she  should  go  out  there 
in  the  morning,  he  would  have  gone.  Whether 

219 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

to  return  or  never  to  return,  he  would  have  passed 
beyond  life's  horizon  to  her.  To  have  him  as 
hers  alone  for  one  night!  The  joy  of  being  be 
side  him  without  his  knowing ! 

The  warm  spring  night  with  its  flashing  stars 
and  low  south  wind  became  an  inner  voice:  "/ 
understand  and  I  am  to  be  trusted.  The  heart 
can  show  its  secrets  with  me.  I  am  the  ear  of 
all  that  is  intimate  and  hidden  and  I  never  betray. 
What  I,  in  darkness,  do,  I  curtain  away  into 
privacy.  He  is  out  here  with  me.  He  is  yours. 
Corner 

She  noiselessly  opened  her  door  and  stood  in 
the  hall  and  listened  for  any  sound,  with  her  first 
fear  of  those  she  loved.  Then  she  descended  the 
stairway  and  slipped  out  of  the  house. 

As  she  drew  near  the  crest  of  the  hill,  having 
grown  accustomed  to  the  starlight,  she  became 
frightened  that  there  was  so  much  of  it :  if  he  were 
awake,  he  would  see  her  coming.  She  passed 
within  the  shadows  of  the  trees  of  the  grove, 
trembling  and  glad  to  be  .swallowed  up  in 
protective  darkness.  But  a  moment  later,  with 

220 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

the  feet  of  a  frightened  hare  and  with  her  hands 
touching  the  trunks  of  the  trees  for  support,  she 
made  her  way  to  the  opposite  side  and  looked  out 
from  her  concealment. 

A  little  distance  off  he  lay  asleep  on  the  ground. 
Nearer  her  was  his  supper.  There  was  light  suf 
ficient  for  her  to  see  that  everything  was  as  she 
had  arranged  it — his  folded  napkin,  her  flowers. 

He  lay  flat  on  his  stomach,  sleeping  as  a  man 
who  from  exhaustion  has  thrown  himself  down  in 
the  first  easiest  way.  His  arms  were  crossed 
under  his  chest.  He  had  taken  off  his  shoes  and 
coat  and  had  rolled  the  coat  about  the  shoes, 
making  him  his  customary  pillow.  His  face 
rested  on  one  side.  Camping  and  soldiering  had 
taught  the  first  great  lesson  of  such  a  life:  that 
whatever  the  day  has  brought,  night  must  bring 
sleep,  instant  sleep,  for  the  sake  of  what  the  day 
to  follow  may  require. 

She  looked  at  him  a  long  time  and  then  she 
stepped  out  of  the  concealment  of  the  grove 
and,  softly  drawing  nearer,  sat  down  behind 
him. 

221 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

The  starlight  was  so  clear!  She  followed  his 
outlines;  she  realized  a  kind  of  alien  joy  in 
his  bulk.  Beside  all  that  he  was  in  himself,  she 
embraced  all  that  he  represented :  he  was  the  glory 
of  battles;  there  was  Southern  agony  in  him, 
Southern  sorrow.  He  lay  there  as  the  flower  of 
the  youth  of  half  the  nation.  Thousands  had 
measured  their  lengths  thus  in  a  sleep  never  to  be 
broken. 

And  so,  though  he  was  not  hers,  still,  she  had 
her  share  in  him;  if  he  was  not  her  lover,  he  was 
yet  her  soldier,  her  American.  She  wanted  to  see 
his  face.  If  he  awoke,  let  her  vigil  be  that  of  a 
girl  beside  a  soldier  who  came  into  her  life  one 
day  and  went  out  of  it  the  next.  Had  not  some 
one  else  watched  beside  him  in  the  hospital  when 
he  was  wounded4?  Did  he  not  lie  worse  wounded 
now?  She  rose  and  went  round  and  sat  down  in 
front  of  him. 

At  arm's-length  from  his  face  there  lay  on  the 
grass  a  little  white  thing;  it  was  his  handkerchief. 
She  put  out  her  hand  just  to  touch  something  that 
was  his.  The  handkerchief  was  wet — wet  with 

222 


Upon  one  of  the  group  the  attention  of  the  others  was  concentrated 
with  more  than  respect.  "        ,'*>    «     «  *^"\"1 ";  ->^  *\  ^ 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

his  tears.     She  allowed  her  hand  to  touch  his 
tears. 

Once  again  her  heart  noticed  what  it  had 
claimed  first — the  signal  of  manhood  on  his  lip, 
life's  springtime,  its  flame.  There  was  flame  in 
him  for  some  one.  His  whole  sleeping  figure 
breathed  love;  it  whispered  that  even  now  he 
might  be  wrapped  in  dreams  of  happiness  with 
some  one  else;  they  mingled  their  kisses  and  ca 
resses  while  she  sat  beside  them  both. 

New  impulses  in  her  nature  began  to  break 
down  the  old  forces  of  restraint,  of  self-control. 
She  moved  nearer  to  him,  with  no  sound  of  her 
breath  on  the  still  air.  She  bent  over  to  fix  in 
her  memory  the  new  look  of  him.  Yet  the  old 
look  was  there  too;  he  was  a  changeless  figure  of 
memory,  emerging  into  disillusion.  So  bending 
over,  she  discovered  along  the  edge  of  his  hair  a 
gash-like  wound.  There  had  been  fighting  with 
cold  steel  against  cold  steel.  A  bayonet,  aimed 
perhaps  at  his  neck,  at  the  jugular  vein,  had 
grazed  his  forehead.  Love  in  her  took  the  guise 
of  compassion :  she  yearned  to  lift  his  head  to  her 

225 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

lap,  to  pass  her  arms  about  it,  and  draw  it  against 
her  breast — to  feel  his  face  against  her  breast.  If 
she  could  but  feel  his  face  against  her  breast! 

Bitterly  she  recalled  the  words  his  mother  had 
asked  her  to  write.  She  had  demurred  but  that 
mother's  imperious  will  had  had  its  way — those 
words  about  the  years  that  awaited  him  and  her 
together.  Was  this  what  had  offended  him'? 
Had  he  resented  being  held,  as  a  man,  to  what 
had  been  a  boyish  pledget  If  he  awoke  and  saw 
her  thus  beside  him  out  there  alone  in  the  night, 
would  he  not  think  that,  though  rebuffed,  she  yet 
claimed  him? 

She  got  up  softly  and  went  round  behind  him 
again  and  kneeled  over  him,  looking  at  him.  She 
bent  lower  and  laid  her  lips  on  the  edges  of  his 
hair.  Once  and  again  she  kissed  his  hair.  Then 
she  kissed  his  shoulder. 

When  the  sun  was  high  in  the  empty  day,  shin 
ing  on  the  empty  world,  she  went  back. 

Everything  was  as  she  had  arranged  it — her 
flowers,  his  napkin.  Then  beside  her  flowers  she 
saw  some  sheets  of  paper,  little  brownish-white 

226 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

leaves  of  paper,  which  might  have  been  torn  from 
some  cheap  memorandum-book,  perhaps  a  sol 
dier's  diary.  They  were  covered  with  writing  in 
pencil : 

Lucy:  It  is  daybreak.  There  is  just  light  enough 
to  write  by.  I  am  starting  back  and  before  I  go  I 
must  try  to  tell  you  everything. 

When  your  letter  reached  me  in  camp,  I  started  as 
soon  as  possible.  I  reached  here  too  late  but  I  came 
as  quickly  as  I  could.  What  I  must  explain  is  that 
I  did  not  apply  for  leave  of  absence;  it  would  not  have 
been  granted.  If  every  soldier  who  has  been  called 
home  by  sufferings  and  privations  had  been  granted 
leave  of  absence,  there  would  have  been  no  armies  left 
in  the  field.  I  came  without  permission.  But  do  you 
know  what  that  means'?  It  means  desertion.  And  you 
know  what  desertion  means'?  Court  martial,  military 
execution. 

If  the  army  had  been  drawn  up  for  battle  and  I  had 
been  in  the  front  rank,  and  if  by  some  strange  chance 
my  mother  had  suddenly  appeared  twenty  yards  off;  if 
I  had  seen  her  there,  mortally  ill  and  about  to  fall  and 
beckoning  to  me,  I  should  have  rushed  out  of  the  ranks 
to  her  side.  Instead  of  a  few  yards,  I  have  come  hun 
dreds  of  miles ;  but  the  greater  distance  has  not  changed 
my  act.  To  myself  I  have  but  stepped  out  of  the  ranks 
of  the  army  and  the  eyes  of  the  army  have  been  on  me 

227 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

here.  What  I  have  done  has  been  done  in  the  open  and 
on  the  battlefield.  I  came  home  for  one  duty  only  and 
I  have  tried  not  to  let  the  duty  of  a  son  tarnish  honor. 
I  have  eaten  only  what  I  had  in  camp;  I  have  slept  as 
far  as  possible  as  I  slept  in  the  trenches. 

But,  Lucy,  I  did  not  step  out  of  the  ranks  to  you. 
And  now  do  you  understand  why  I  have  not  spoken  to 
you,  have  stifled  all  feeling,  have  blinded  my  eyes, 
sealed  my  lips,  nor  taken  advantage  of  duty  to  wrest 
from  it  a  brief  delight?  I  cannot  do  so  even  in  this 
letter.  Not  here,  not  now,  perhaps  never. 

Even  had  I  not  had  strength  to  do  this,  one  other 
thing  would  have  determined  it.  I  could  not  say  to  you, 
"I  am  a  deserter,"  and  then  have  spoken  of  love.  A  de 
serter,  a  lover — not  that! 

When  I  left  camp,  the  troops  were  on  the  eve  of  a 
great  battle,  perhaps  the  decisive  one  of  the  whole  war. 
That  battle  has  since  been  fought.  If  the  despatches  in 
the  newspapers  are  reliable,  my  command  has  been  cut 
to  pieces,  annihilated.  And  the  army  is  broken  and  re 
treating.  I  am  going  to  overtake  it  if  I  can  and  give 
myself  up.  They  will  shoot  me  as  a  deserter  or  they 
will  give  me  my  place  back  in  the  ranks.  Which  they 
will  do  I  do  not  know.  They  will  do  as  they  should. 

I  tell  you  all  this  because  I  do  not  wish  you  to  mis 
judge  me.  If  I  never  come  back,  think  of  me  as  having 
tried  to  do  what  is  right.  Perhaps  I  may  have  tried  too 
hard.  Perhaps  all  of  us,  for  the  sake  of  one  right,  are 
often  obliged  to  neglect  some  other  right.  Perhaps  only 

228 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

God  can  always  do  right  with  all  things.  If  we  men 
try  to  attend  to  one  duty,  we  have  to  neglect  some  other, 
duty. 

And  believe — what  I  cannot  here  write — that  I  have 
lived  with  you  devotedly  and  faithfully,  with  you  only, 
every  moment  since  we  parted.  Every  night  that  pillow, 
as  when  we  kissed  one  another  and  said  good-by. 

Do  you  know  how  it  was  possible  for  me  to  reach 
here  and  how  it  is  now  possible  for  me  to  return4? 
My  tent-mate,  a  man  I  would  die  for,  gave  me  his 
money  to  bring  and  to  take  me  back.  Often  I  have  seen 
that  comrade  half  starved,  half  naked  in  the  cold  of 
winter,  keeping  his  money  for  some  greater  need,  and 
he  gave  it  all  to  me.  Through  him  I  have  some  chance 
of  reaching  the  army  before  peace  is  declared  and  the 
remnant  of  the  troops  is  disbanded.  If  it  is  all  over 
before  I  get  there,  life  will  be  as  good  as  over  for  me : 
I  shall  be  the  soldier  who  on  the  eve  of  battle  gave  out. 
Hope  that  I  may  reach  there  in  time  either  to  be  pardoned 
or  to  be  shot. 

If  the  worst  should  befall  me,  and  if  hereafter  this 
friend  should  ever  write  to  you  and  you  should  write 
to  him,  tell  him  that  the  one  thing  I  spoke  to  you  about 
was  his  deed. 

And  one  thing  more:  my  mother's  letter  brightens 
my  boyhood  and  opens  a  straight  road  to  her  across  the 
world,  whether  that  road  be  long  or  short. 

These  last  few  moments  here  are  so  strange — the  morn 
ing  light  beginning  to  spread  over  the  fields,  the  house- 

229 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

tops  in  the  distance,  the  first  leaves  on  the  trees  in 
spring,  the  earliest  notes  of  the  birds  at  daybreak.  It 
was  these  that  woke  me.  The  noise  of  cannon  and  shell 
would  not  have  meant  anything.  I  should  have  slept 
through  them.  But  the  first  notes  of  the  birds  woke 
me.  At  first  I  was  back  again  in  the  years  gone  by, 
and  when  I  came  to  myself  and  found  that  I  was  here 
in  Kentucky  again — 


230 


CHAPTER  VII 

HE  had  reached  Richmond.  It  was  early  fore 
noon  of  the  fourth  of  April,  one  of  the  days 
when  a  nation  reaps  the  sowings  of  long  years  and 
when  the  man,  appointed  by  history  to  do  the 
reaping,  appears  upon  the  field,  facing  the  labor 
ers  of  his  country  and  the  more  distant  laborers 
of  mankind. 

Joseph  Sumner,  faint  with  hunger  and  loss  of 
sleep  and  destruction  of  mental  calm,  made  his 
way  from  the  station  to  the  streets  and  found 
himself  under  a  pleasant  sky  and  inside  the  smoke- 
vomiting,  flame-vomiting  crater  of  the  volcano  of 
the  whole  war — the  ruins  of  Richmond. 

He  paid  little  heed  to  the  ruins.  If  they  af 
fected  him  at  all,  they  created  within  him  the 
feeling  that  he  was  getting  back  to  familiar  scenes 
of  horror.  He  was  goaded  by  two  pressing 
needs :  to  buy  the  first  newspaper  possible  for  in- 

231 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

telligence  of  where  the  armies  were  by  this  time; 
and  with  the  few  pieces  of  the  priceless  silver  left 
in  his  pocket  to  get  him  some  food  for  strength 
to  start  out  to  overtake  them.  With  his  paper 
he  hurried  to  the  first  near-by  eating-place  of  poor 
enough  character,  suitable  for  him  that  morning, 
beggared  as  he  was;  and  while  he  waited  for  his 
ration  to  be  cooked,  he  devoured  the  news.  The 
remnant  of  the  Army  of  Northern  Virginia,  in 
desperate  retreat  four  days'  marches  distant, 
hemmed  in  and  harassed  on  each  flank,  hacked  to 
pieces  in  the  rear,  cut  off  by  scouting  parties  from 
its  supplies  in  front — this  remnant,  while  fighting 
infantry  and  cavalry  and  artillery  on  four  sides  at 
once  and  dragging  painfully  forward  its  wagon- 
train  of  stores,  was  yet  hurrying  toward  the  place 
where  it  might  make  a  stand,  toward  fastnesses 
of  the  mountains.  As  yet,  then,  no  surrender  had 
taken  place.  There  was  exhilaration  in  these  tid 
ings;  he  drank  them  as  stimulant  rather  than  his 
helpless  coffee ;  he  swallowed  them  as  better  nour 
ishment  than  his  bread  and  bacon.  Only  four 
days'  march  lay  between  him  and  his  general. 

232 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

He  had  not  counted  the  war  price  of  food  in 
Richmond  and  was  forced  to  lay  on  the  table  of 
his  eating-place  nearly  all  his  precious  silver  in 
payment. 

In  the  street  he  asked  his  way  to  the  river  and 
as  he  walked  toward  it  through  the  surging  crowd, 
time  and  again  he  saw  gray-jackets,  deserters. 
They  were  there  in  hundreds,  the  scampering  rats 
of  the  army  long  hidden  in  their  holes  in  Rich 
mond  and  now  come  out  into  the  open,  all  danger 
passed. 

When  he  reached  the  river,  he  asked  to  have 
pointed  out  to  him  the  place  where  the  army  had 
crossed ;  and  this  brought  him  to  the  bridge,  there 
no  longer.  He  did  not  know  that  it  had  been 
destroyed,  that  all  the  bridges  were  down ;  and  he 
stood  for  a  little  while  looking  across  at  the  oppo 
site  bank,  where  the  last  of  the  soldiers  had 
moved,  covering  the  retreat,  vanishing  down  the 
Virginia  road,  vanishing  down  the  road  of  history. 

One  new  rough  necessity  was  making  itself 
clear  to  his  mind :  that  he  could  not  start  without 
money  in  his  pocket;  he  might  fall  from  starva- 

233 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

tion  on  the  way.  Money  he  must  have  and  he 
must  find  some  way  to  earn  it  at  once;  and  as  he 
walked  along  the  river-bank,  he  besought  one  man 
after  another  to  give  him  work.  Every  one  told 
him  that  were  he  a  hundred  men,  he  could  find 
work  around  the  burned  districts  of  the  city, 
where  merchants  had  carried  their  merchandise 
into  the  street  and  now  could  find  no  one  to  move 
it  to  places  of  security.  Negroes  would  not 
touch  it.  This  was  the  downfall  of  Richmond, 
the  downfall  of  the  Confederacy,  of  their  masters 
and  mistresses.  Their  working  days  were  over! 

He  was  about  to  leave  the  river  for  the  town 
when  something  caught  his  eye  as  of  possible  use 
to  him — a  boat  being  rowed  along;  later  that  boat 
might  row  him.  He  halted  and  watched  it. 

Slowly  along  the  river  it  came,  a  twelve-oared 
barge  manned  by  twelve  United  States  sailors. 
Sitting  in  the  barge  were  a  few  men ;  but  the  sail 
ors  and  the  men  save  one  seemed  to  have  their 
respect  fixed  upon  a  single  person  in  the  barge — 
the  only  man  who  was  being  ceremoniously  rowed. 
Even  seated,  he  was  seen  to  be  long,  awkward, 

234 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

pallid,  and  rough,  an  uncouth  primitive  piece  of 
human  workmanship.  He  sat  silent,  taking  no 
notice  of  the  men  who  accompanied  him;  his  pite 
ous  eyes  were  fixed  on  the  doomed  city,  on  Rich 
mond,  which  he  had  never  seen. 

A  man  who  had  come  up  from  behind  and  was 
standing  beside  Joseph  Sumner,  suddenly  gave  a 
wild  shout  and  jerked  off  his  hat,  and  turning  to 
him  as  though  he  were  a  human  brother,  pointed 
at  the  barge  and  exclaimed  excitedly : 

"That's  Linclon!  There's  the  President! 
There  he  is !  There  's  the  man  who  has  done  it 
all!" 

He  ran  down  closer  to  the  river's  edge  and 
stood  waving  his  hat  and  hallooing.  Others  took 
up  the  cry  and  voices  and  forms  began  to  follow 
the  barge. 

Joseph  Sumner  did  not  move  nor  lift  his  hat 
nor  shout — standing  spellbound;  there  was  the 
man  that  of  all  the  millions  alive  on  the  earth  he 
had  most  wished  to  see.  That  man,  too,  was  from 
Kentucky. 

On  this  pleasant  fourth  of  April  of  that  year 
235 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

1865,  the  reaper,  appointed  by  the  nation  to  reap 
the  long  sowings  of  its  erring  years,  was  there  in 
simple  view  of  his  countrymen.  The  rowing  sail 
ors  pushed  the  great  gaunt  reaper  with  the  piteous 
eyes  toward  Libby  Prison. 

Early  in  the  afternoon  Joseph  Sumner  was 
rolling  a  barrel  along  the  sidewalk.  He  had  en 
gaged  to  roll  barrels  of  merchandise  from  a  half- 
burned  warehouse  to  a  place  near  by.  He  was 
rolling  his  barrel  when  in  the  distance  he  heard 
a  roar  of  voices,  a  tide  of  voices  coming  nearer 
like  a  multitude  of  waters;  breaking  against  the 
walls  of  houses  and  the  stones  of  the  streets — the 
crumbling  waters  of  troubled  but  triumphant, 
voices.  Then  he  caught  sight  of  a  scene  that  even 
in  the  distance  seared  his  eyes,  scorched  his  mind. 

A  wild  disordered  mob  of  black  and  white 
human  beings,  crowded  from  the  middle  of  the 
street  out  to  the  sidewalk,  against  the  walls  of 
the  houses,  came  sweeping  on,  carrying  everything 
before  them.  This  multitude  surged  and  eddied 
and  roared  and  sang  in  front  of  and  on  each  side 
of  and  behind  a  splendid  carriage,  and  sitting  in 

236 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

the  carriage  was  the  man  he  had  seen  in  the  barge 
on  the  river.  Still  the  same  rough,  plain,  solemn, 
sallow  man  there  on  the  rear  seat  of  the  carriage, 
with  no  smile  on  his  face,  no  flash  in  his  eyes,  no 
triumph  in  his  jaws,  no  sense  of  his  own  glory; 
but  looking  as  though  the  inhumanity  of  centu 
ries  swarmed  about  his  carriage,  as  though  the 
mistakes  of  a  young  nation  in  a  new  world 
laughed  and  wept  in  those  frantic  and  frenzied 
souls.  He  sat  there  as  though  on  him  rested  the 
eyes  of  Washington,  of  Jefferson,  the  eyes  of 
Caesar  and  of  Napoleon;  and  the  eyes  of  Socrates 
and  the  eyes  of  Christ. 

Joseph  Sumner,  as  the  mob  swept  past  him, 
was  pushed  back  against  a  doorway.  He  clung 
to  it,  leaving  his  barrel  to  its  fate.  A  strange 
memory  came  back  to  him.  When  a  little  fellow 
at  home  often  he  had  looked  at  four  pictures  in 
the  big  red  morocco-bound  Bible :  one  of  the  Gar 
den  of  Eden,  one  of  the  deluge,  one  of  Samson 
tearing  down  the  prison  house,  and  one  of  Christ 
entering  Jerusalem.  He  thought  of  this  last  pic 
ture  now;  the  palm-branches  in  the  old  childhood 

237 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

picture  were  the  forest  of  black  arms  waved  in 
the  air;  the  hosannas  in  the  streets  of  Jerusalem 
were  the  cries  of  these  Africans,  heard  not  long 
ago  near  the  equator,  and  now  united  around  the 
savior  of  slaves  in  the  United  States. 

The  reaper,  savior,  rode  there  in  his  triumphal 
carriage,  with  ten  short  days  of  his  life  to  live. 

Joseph  Sumner  looked  on,  and  his  whole  nature 
swung  away  from  the  scene  before  him  to  an 
other  distant  scene — to  the  fragment  of  the  army 
and  to  his  idol,  his  general,  his  great  American,  re 
treating  before  this  man  in  the  carriage.  He  may 
have  had  some  thought  of  how  terrible  it  was  that 
all  the  greatness  in  America  could  not  be  on  one 
and  the  same  side;  but  since  it  was  divided,  with 
rage  at  what  he  saw,  his  heart  turned  toward  his 
general,  a  great  figure  vanishing  in  the  west  like 
a  sun  of  history  going  down  in  dark  colossal 
clouds.  With  the  vehemence  of  rage,  he  set  to 
work  again  that  he  might  reach  there  before  the 
sun  of  his  beloved  soldier  set,  leaving  its  shadows 
on  the  world. 

Toward  sundown  he  left  off  rolling  barrels  and 

238 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

took  what  was  due  him  and  went  to  a  cheap 
eating-place  and  spent  a  large  part  of  it  for  one 
more  ration;  then  back  to  the  river  and  across  it 
and  then  on  the  track  of  the  retreating  army. 

And  never  were  miles  under  his  feet  so  smooth 
and  sweet  as  those  he  swiftly  traversed.  He  had 
the  freshness  of  unwasted  strength;  he  moved  as 
though  pushed  forward  by  the  hands  of  dead  sol 
diers,  his  comrades.  Mile  after  mile,  joyously  on 
and  on  through  the  gathering  darkness;  and  then 
he  began  to  realize  that  he  was  in  truth  in  the 
track  of  ruined  fighting-men;  for  the  road  began 
to  be  strewn  with  the  wreckage  and  refuse  of  war 
and  of  things  good  to  use  but  thrown  away  to 
lighten  the  burdens  of  exhausted  troops. 

Some  miles  out  he  threw  himself  down  at  last, 
somewhere,  anywhere,  to  sleep. 


239 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  sun  rose  on  the  next  day,  a  long,  long 
day,  and  set  behind  thick  woods.  It  rose  on 
the  next,  and  sank  gorgeously  behind  the  rough 
tops  of  oak  and  pine.  It  rose  on  the  third,  the 
longest  day  of  all,  and  went  down  somehow, 
somewhere.  On  the  fourth  day,  as  it  was  about 
to  set,  its  slanting  rays  fell  on  the  little  county 
town  of  Appomattox  Court  House  and  on  the  last 
of  the  Army  of  Northern  Virginia,  about  to  go 
into  camp  on  that  night  of  the  eighth  of  April. 

But  hardly  had  night  fallen  when  down  at  the 
station,  among  the  wagon-trains  where  three  bat 
teries  had  been  planted,  as  hot  and  furious  a 
struggle  as  any  of  the  entire  war  took  place  for 
possession  of  these  guns  and  to  prevent  the  enemy 
from  striking  an  artillery-train  on  ahead  and 
establishing  a  cordon  around  the  camp.  Down 
there,  not  far  from  the  headwaters  of  the  little 
river,  knee-deep  to  a  horse,  it  was  fought  to  the 

240 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

muzzle  with  shells  and  grape  and  canister,  with 
pistols  and  the  bayonets  and  butts  of  Spencers — 
a  small  flaming  inferno  of  slaughter. 

The  guns  were  saved  for  the  night  and  there 
was  a  lull,  a  retreat,  until  daylight;  and  by  and 
by,  on  higher  ground,  in  the  woods  around  the 
village,  scattered  fires  of  brushwood  began  to 
gleam. 

Late,  around  one  of  these  bivouac  fires  sat  five 
men.  Upon  one  of  the  group  the  attention  of  the 
others  was  concentrated  with  more  than  respect, 
with  reverence,  veneration:  a  man  six  feet  of 
stature  in  a  gray  uniform,  with  three  simple  stars 
on  his  collar;  in  cavalry  boots  reaching  about  his 
knees;  gray-eyed,  gray-haired,  gray-whiskered,  a 
gray  felt  hat  on  his  knees.  A  presence  of  massive- 
ness  and  simplicity  and  calm,  a  Doric  column  in 
an  American  Parthenon  never  to  be  built.  Un- 
crushed,  unruffled,  with  leisure  to  give  attention 
to  the  least  detail  of  his  desperate  situation;  in 
all  things  as  a  man  who  long  before  this  night 
had  counted  the  cost  and  now  had  but  to  look  on 
and  await  the  inevitable. 

241 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

Distant  eyes  had  looked  on  and  watched  him 
and  all  that  he  did :  England,  with  its  memories 
of  Agincourt,  of  the  Peninsular  and  of  Waterloo, 
studied  him;  the  military  strategists  of  France, 
with  their  minds  fixed  on  the  arch  in  the  Place  de 
1'Etoile,  followed  from  afar  his  slightest  move; 
the  Prussians,  with  Frederick  the  Great  behind 
them,  mapped  his  campaigns  for  future  use  on 
other  soils;  Russia,  with  great  Peter  and  great 
Catharine,  took  lessons. 

The  four  other  men  at  the  bivouac  fire  were  his 
corps  commanders,  in  council  of  war  to  determine 
whether  at  daybreak  the  carnage  should  go  on. 
At  quick  intervals  their  deliberations  were  inter 
rupted  ;  scouts,  staff -officers,  aides,  came  and  went. 
The  rough  wild  spot,  a  flame  of  logs  and  brush 
wood,  an  army  blanket  thrown  over  a  fallen  tree, 
the  great  oak  overhead  from  the  low  boughs  of 
which,  as  from  a  canopy,  long  yellow  tassels  were 
swinging  in  the  April  wind  as  in  military  unison 
and  in  mockery  of  war — all  made  a  picture  of  a 
chapter  of  history  near  its  end. 

A  young  staff-officer  approached  out  of  the  sur- 
242 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

rounding  darkness  of  the  wood,  and  halted  on  the 
edge  of  the  firelight  opposite  the  commanding 
figure  in  the  group  of  veteran  strategists;  he 
waited  to  be  recognized.  Recognition  reached 
him  as  a  mere  look  of  courteous  inquiry.  The 
officer  saluted  and  explained: 

"General,  I  am  sorry  to  interrupt  you,  but  I 
thought  it  would  be  better  to  do  so.  When  the 
fighting  was  over  down  at  the  station,  as  the  sur 
geons  and  ambulance-men  were  looking  about  in 
the  darkness  for  the  wounded,  they  came  upon  a 
young  man  lying  beside  a  dead  Union  soldier  and 
beside  his  own  musket.  He  had  been  struck  on 
the  head  with  the  butt-end  of  the  Union  soldier's 
musket  and  knocked  senseless.  When  he  was  re 
vived  he  began  to  ask  to  be  taken  to  headquarters. 
He  said  he  wanted  to  speak  to  you." 

The  officer  paused  and  waited  for  orders  to 
go  on. 

"Who  is  he?     What  does  he  want?" 

"He  will  not  tell  any  of  us  who  he  is  or  what 
he  wants.  He  refuses  to  answer  any  questions. 
He  insists  that  he  wishes  to  speak  to  you." 

243 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

The  story  began  to  have  the  complexion  of 
secret  news.  The  unknown  might  be  the  bearer 
of  special  despatches,  of  oral  despatches.  The 
service  of  war  had  its  disguises. 

"Where  is  he?' 

"Down  near  the  depot  by  the  wagons  and  the 
cavalry." 

"Have  him  come." 

"I  don't  know,  General,  whether  he  can  come. 
He  must  have  been  more  dead  than  alive  before 
he  got  mixed  up  with  the  fighting.  He  has  n't 
the  strength  to  come." 

"Can't  you  aid  him  to  come?  Can't  you  bring 
him?' 

They  brought  him.  A  soldier  on  each  side 
held  him  up  as  he  took  steps  but  had  no  strength 
to  stand  on  his  legs.  They  halted  with  him  as 
they  reached  the  circle  of  firelight.  Behind  them, 
half  shadowed,  could  be  seen  the  curious  faces  of 
other  soldiers  who  had  followed.  As  they  halted 
with  him,  he  put  out  his  arms  and  not  unkindly 
but  resolvedly  pushed  away  the  soldier  on  each 
side,  as  though  he  declined  to  be  helped  and  would 

244 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

stand  on  his  own  legs.  They  stepped  aside,  and 
he  did  so  stand  there  before  his  general,  who  had 
never  seen  him  and  now  looked  at  him  curiously. 
His  hope  of  these  last  few  days  had  been  real 
ized;  he  had  reached  the  presence  of  his  captain 
and  his  judge.  He  stood  for  a  few  moments 
steadying  himself  on  his  strength,  standing  up  on 
his  will,  and  in  his  brain  some  words  of  the  great 
man  before  him  began  to  whirl  round  and  round: 
"Human  virtue  must  be  equal  to  human  calam 
ity.'''  Those  words  waved  before  his  weakened 
dizzy  brain  like  letters  on  a  flag,  flapping  in  a 
storm.  Then  all  at  once  he  pitched  over  head 
foremost  face  downward  to  the  earth. 

They  lifted  him  and  he  sat  up  and  began  again 
to  push  every  one  away  from  him  as  though  he 
would  get  up  unaided.  Some  one  inquired: 

"Has  any  one  any  brandy'?" 

Out  of  the  darkened  group  on  the  outskirts  a 
soldier  stepped  forward  with  a  half-empty  can 
teen  and  held  it  to  a  comrade's  mouth.  The 
comrade  swallowed  some  of  the  brandy.  In  a 
few  moments  he  made  another  effort  to  stand  on 

245 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

his  own  feet,  and  struggled  up  and  did  again  so 
stand,  a  ghastly  ruin.  The  bandage  around 
his  head  had  been  displaced,  showing  the  blood- 
clot  in  the  edges  of  his  hair:  a  little  stream  of 
blood  trickled  down.  More  than  curiosity,  more 
than  interest,  more  than  sympathy  had  by  this 
time  somehow  met  in  him.  There  was  fight  in 
him;  there  was  something  of  the  great  in  him; 
and  he  had  something  to  say,  if  he  could  but  say 
it,  that  was  plainly  a  matter  of  life  and  death  to 
him.  It  was  one  of  the  moments,  not  uncommon 
in  the  theaters  of  war,  when,  amidst  great  and 
wide  scenes  encompassing  immense  armies  and  the 
fate  of  nations,  something  wholly  personal  comes 
to  the  front  and  everything  else  waits  until  it  is 
heard.  For  in  every  man's  mind  and  heart,  deep 
down,  is  perpetual  remembrance  that  armies  and 
nations  rest  at  last  upon  a  man — upon  the  grit 
and  troubles  of  the  individual. 

The  questions  began  in  a  voice  touched  with 
innate  humanity: 

"What  is  it  you  want*?" 

With  a  half-wild  look  the  reply  was  returned: 
246 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

"I  don't  know  where  my  command  is.  I  have 
just  reached  camp.  I  can't  find  what  little  there 
is  left  of  my  command.  Everything  is  scattered 
about  in  the  woods,  and  it  is  dark,  and  I  can't 
find  my  command." 

They  thought  he  must  be  out  of  his  head,  stand 
ing  there  in  citizen's  clothes  and  foolishly  ram 
bling  on  about  his  command.  Still,  during  those 
times  a  citizen's  clothes  might  be  worn  for  a  pur 
pose. 

"Are  you  a  soldier?" 

The  terrific  reply  was  itself  a  tragedy: 

"I  don't  know  whether  I  am  a  soldier  or  not." 

In  reality  they  began  to  think  that  his  mind 
wandered. 

The  next  question  betrayed  the  grotesque  stage 
the  investigation  had  reached : 

"You  were  mixed  up  in  the  fighting.  You 
killed  a  Union  soldier.  If  you  are  not  a  soldier, 
and  if  you  killed  a  soldier,  you  murdered  a  man. 
You  would  have  to  be  committed  and  tried  for 
murder  in  the  courts  of  Virginia.  You  say  you 
are  not  a  soldier?" 

247 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

The  answer  was  returned  with  thrilling  tender 
ness:  it  seemed  to  come  from  a  vanished  glory, 
a  crushed  pride,  from  a  lost  life : 

"I  was  a  soldier.  I  deserted.  I  deserted  at 
Petersburg  before  the  battle  of  Five  Forks.  I 
went  home." 

He  put  up  his  hand  and  pushed  the  bandage 
back  from  his  bleeding  head  as  though  he  desired 
that  they  should  all  identify  him,  get  a  good  look 
at  him.  And  they  all  did  look  at  him  now  with 
the  long  fatal  silence  of  soldiers.  All  at  once  the 
council  of  war  became  in  effect  a  court-martial. 

The  next  question  was  in  the  tone  of  military 
routine : 

"What  is  your  name?" 

"My  name  is  Joseph  Sumner.  I  am  a  Ken 
tucky  soldier — I  was" 

"What  is  your  command,  or  what  was  your 
command*?" 

His  mind  was  not  wandering  now;  it  went 
about  making  everything  clearly  understood:  he 
named  his  brigade,  his  regiment,  his  company. 

From  this  point,  if  there  had  been  present  some 
248 


He  had  reached  the  presence  of  his  captain  and  his  judge. 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

intelligence  higher  than  human,  it  might  have 
noted  that  the  questions  which  followed  were 
asked  with  the  same  absence  of  emotion,  yet  with 
a  kindlier  difference  of  tone.  Some  higher  in 
telligence  might  have  remarked  this;  none  there 
did. 

"Why  did  you  desert?' 

He  shook  his  head. 

"I  will  not  tell  you;  it  would  be  like  an  excuse." 

"How  long  were  you  at  home'?'7 

"One  night." 

"Then  you  started  back?' 

"Then  I  started  back." 

"Why  did  you  come  back?" 

"What  else  was  there  to  do  but  come  back?" 

There  was  a  pause. 

"How  did  you  get  here?" 

"From  Richmond?" 

"Yes;  how  did  you  get  here  from  Richmond?" 

"God  knows;  I  don't." 

There  was  another  pause : 

"You  refuse  to  tell  why  you  deserted?" 

"I  refuse." 

251 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

"Then  what  was  it  you  wanted?" 

"I  wanted  to  say  that  I  am  here  to  be  shot  or 
to  be  pardoned." 

There  was  a  pause. 

"How  did  you  get  out  of  camp?" 

"I  walked  out." 

"How  did  you  get  the  money  to  travel  on?" 

For  a  moment  some  hot  vital  impulse  leaped 
to  his  eyes  to  tell ;  then  as  though  second  thought 
brought  a  safer  decision  he  answered : 

"I  'd  better  not  tell  you  that." 

"Which  side  of  the  camp  did  you  escape  by?" 

He  shook  his  head  sorrowfully. 

"I  will  not  answer  that  question." 

"Did  you  know  who  was  on  picket-duty  when 
you  escaped?" 

"I  'd  go  to  hell  before  I  would  answer  that 
question." 

There  was  a  pause. 

"How  do  you  happen  to  come  in  now,  at  the 
very  last  hour?" 

"I  could  n't  catch  up  with  you.     You  had  the 


252 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

The  grim  irony  of  it — a  deserter  trying  to  over 
take  his  fleeing  general.  There  were  some  who 
would  have  liked  to  smile,  there  were  some  who 
did. 

The  presiding  officer  of  the  court-martial 
quietly  pointed  to  the  log  covered  with  a  blanket 
on  the  edge  of  the  bivouac  fire. 

"Sit  down  there." 

He  motioned  to  the  staff-officer  who  had  spoken 
to  him  first  and  communicated  with  him  in  an 
undertone.  The  officer  disappeared  in  the  direc 
tion  of  camp;  the  council  of  war  went  on  with 
their  deliberations.  By  and  by  the  officer  re 
turned,  bringing  some  letters.  The  great  grave 
central  man  stood  up.  All  stood.  The  young  sol 
dier  staggered  to  his  feet.  His  general  walked 
into  the  center  of  the  group  and,  looking  him 
steadily  in  the  eyes,  addressed  him: 

"Here  are  three  letters.  Two  of  them  are  the 
letters  that  called  you  home.  You  left  them 
with  your  blanket  and  your  arms  when  you  went 
out.  This  other  letter  was  written  to  me  by  the 
soldier  who  was  your  tent-mate  and  who  was  the 

253 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

picket  that  allowed  you  to  escape.  He  sent  your 
letters  to  me,  and  he  wrote  his  own  letter  to  me 
to  say  that  he  was  on  duty  and  that  he  had  let 
you  pass.  He  had  an  idea — we  all  have — that 
the  next  battle  he  went  into  he  would  be  killed. 
He  wrote  that  if  you  came  back  he  might  not 
be  here  to  speak  for  you;  he  said  you  would  not 
speak  for  yourself.  He  was  killed  at  the  battle 
of  Five  Forks.  If  he  were  here,  his  letter  to  me 
would  be  his  pardon.  Your  letters  and  his  letter 
are  your  pardon.  If  the  nation  is  ever  at  war 
again,  I  hope  that  the  soldiers  in  its  armies  will 
be  made  of  such  humanity  and  of  such  manhood 
as  were  my  soldiers.  As  soon  as  you  can,  join 
your  command."  He  turned  toward  the  other 
waiting  soldiers.  "Help  him." 

A  few  hours  later,  at  three  o'clock  next  morn 
ing,  the  carnage  began  again;  but  as  darkness 
lifted,  there,  hemming  them  in,  were  solid  masses 
with  reinforcements  that  had  arrived  during  the 
night,  and  battle  was  butchery,  the  shambles  of 
fighting-men. 

A  few  hours  later  a  great  American,  a  great 
254 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

soldier,  wearing  his  great  white  sword,  quietly 
went  to  meet  another  great  American,  another 
great  soldier,  wearing  his  great  white  sword. 
The  two  spoke  simply,  briefly  together,  as  was  the 
habit  of  their  natures — and  there  was  peace. 

Other  generals  with  other  armies  were  in  the 
field  and  for  a  while  kept  the  field;  but  there  was 
peace  for  the  old  nation,  now  become  the  new 
nation. 


255 


CHAPTER  IX 

MESSAGES  from  the  front  began  to  travel  to 
homesteads  scattered  all  over  the  land — 
homesteads  beginning  to  be  stirred  with  the  glad 
ness  of  another  spring. 

These  were  the  words  sent  to  Lucy  Morehead: 

"I/  is  all  over,  Lucy.  I  am  coming  home  to 
you" 

The  maddening  agony  of  her  suspense  was 
ended. 

One  day  in  May  he  came.  She  had  been  ex 
pecting  him  for  many  days  and  her  heart  had 
pleaded  that  their  meeting  might  take  place 
somewhere  outdoors  away  from  the  house  where 
she  would  not  betray  herself  to  any  eye  and 
where  for  the  first  hour  they  might  be  alone.  So 
she  had  brought  her  sewing,  and  sat  near  some 
white-blossoming  brambles  and  under  the  dappled 

256 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

shade  of  young  trees  on  the  hillside,  dear  to  her 
now  by  many  memories. 

It  was  the  middle  of  the  forenoon;  and  the  at 
mosphere  of  the  day  was  crystal;  and  low  down 
over  the  earth  the  crystal  quivered  and  palpitated 
with  the  sun's  flaming  ardor.  All  sounds  of  living 
creatures  were  marvelously  rich  and  clear.  The 
whistle  of  a  quail  on  the  fence  of  a  field  of  young 
corn  seemed  to  start  beside  the  ear.  The  long 
flute-note  of  the  meadow-lark  was  piercing — him 
of  the  yellow  breast.  Among  the  softly  swaying 
boughs  over  her  head  a  crimson-splashed  oriole 
wove  his  hempen  nest — of  native  Kentucky  hemp 
— and  warbled  as  he  wove,  singing  to  his  work. 
The  grass  all  about  was  thickly  starred  with  low 
earth-lapped  dandelions.  Near  the  moist  roots  of 
the  white-flowered  bramble  at  her  back  curious- 
eyed  wild  blue  violets  leaned  from  their  green 
lattices — not  too  far. 

Amid  all  this,  the  young  leaves  dappling  her 
hair  and  face  and  shoulders,  she  sat  and  worked 
and  waited.  She  was  white-f rocked ;  her  youth 
and  her  innocence  were  like  the  whole  blue  of  the 

257 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

sky.  The  heat  of  coming  noon  began  to  flush  her 
skin;  the  long  lashes  were  ready  to  hide  her  eyes 
lest  he  see  too  much.  Often  she  lifted  these  and 
watched  for  him:  he  would  be  told  at  the  house 
where  she  was  to  be  found.  Then  indeed  and  in 
truth  she  did  at  last  see  him  coming,  swiftly, 
straight  to  her,  his  eyes  fixed  searchingly  on  the 
half-hidden  spot  where  she  must  be. 

She  saw  him:  there  was  no  mistake  now,  no 
misunderstanding,  no  waiting,  no  obstacle;  there 
he  was,  coming  to  her;  life's  realities  with  him 
began  at  last — love's  mysteries. 

She  dropped  her  work  to  the  grass  at  her  feet 
and  rose  and  started  away  from  him,  driven  by 
some  blind  instinct  that  the  ordeal  of  their  meet 
ing  would  be  intolerable  joy.  She  heard  the 
march-like  swish  of  his  feet  through  the  bluegrass 
now  rising  to  its  seed.  The  sound  came  closer 
and  closer,  and  she  turned  with  love's  terror  to 
face  him:  white  f rocked,  under  the  blue  of  the 
sky,  finished  by  nature,  waiting  for  life,  waiting 
for  him. 

He  came  on  toward  her  with  no  smile,  no  mo- 

258 


One    day    in    May   he    came. 


THE  SWORD  OF  YOUTH 

tion  of  his  hand,  no  play  of  the  eye — he  came 
and  opened  his  arms  and  took  her  in  his  arms  in 
silence.  He  passed  one  hand  behind  her  thick 
dark  braids  and  folded  his  fingers  about  her  head 
and  turned  her  face  toward  him  and  so  held  her, 
looking  at  her  with  the  heart-hunger  of  years, 
with  life's  flame  on  his  mouth.  Across  her  lips  a 
quiver  ran — their  weakness,  their  strength,  life's 
surrender,  life's  consecration. 

In  silence  out  in  the  sunlight,  under  the  whole 
blue  sky  of  their  youth  and  their  innocence,  their 
lives  met. 

Thus  already  over  the  exhausted  old  nation  the 
union  of  youth  for  the  long  building  of  the  new 
nation — mighty  nation  as  it  is  now  with  its  great 
ness  all  on  one  side. 

For  there  was  peace. 


THE    END 


261 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORR 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which 
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recall. 


RENEWALS  ONLY 


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REC'D  LD 


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